Malta tops EU list for pollution concerns in households - by a wide margin
One in three say they regularly face pollution and grime
More than one in three people in Malta say pollution and grime impact their household, a rate far higher than any other country in Europe.
Data published by the EU’s statistics office on Monday shows that just 12.2% of Europeans said pollution and environmental issues impacted their households throughout 2023.
However, Malta topped the chart by some distance, with 34.7% of Maltese saying they are regularly exposed to grime and pollution.
Greece lies in second place, with just over one in five Greeks (20.5%) reporting the impacts of pollution on their household, with Germany in third at 16.5%.
At the other end of the table, Croatians were least likely to say grime and pollution had an effect on their lives, at 4.2%, with Sweden and Slovakia trailing narrowly behind.
The list makes for painful reading for Maltese residents.
Malta has comfortably topped every single edition of the list ever since it joined the EU in 2004, often struggling to drop its average beneath the 30% mark.
Malta’s average hovered around the 40 per cent mark between 2010 and 2013 before gradually dropping to a low of 26.5% in 2017.
However, it has risen gradually since then, with the 2023 average of 34.7% the highest in almost a decade.
The results highlight Malta’s long-standing struggle to bring its greenhouse gas emissions under control, as well as its ongoing battle against littering and disorderly waste disposal.
While Malta recently reported the sharpest drop in quarterly emissions in the EU, it had previously seen its emissions rise steadily as its traffic situation continued to deteriorate and demand on the country’s energy grid grew.
Meanwhile, residents in several of Malta’s towns say the garbage situation is out of hand, with Swieqi residents recently taking to the streets to call for stricter enforcement.