Malta wins extension of EU's packaging waste deadline

The European Parliament has adopted a legislative resolution relating to the recycling and recovery of packaging waste in the 10 new member states, with Malta being given an extension of another year to fully adopt the directive.

Originally, Malta had till the end of 2012 to get in line with all the measures included in this environment-related directive.

Contacted by The Times, a spokesman for the Malta Federation of Industry welcomed this decision. He said that "the longer we take to implement the directive the better for small Maltese industries to comply". He said that "there needs to be more awareness and education if we are ever going to achieve the EU targets".

Dorette Corbey, the Dutch MEP who proposed the revision, said that the proposed new deadlines correspond to the requests by the new member states. Prior to the decision, the proposal was already discussed in the Environment Committee, where Malta was represented by MEP David Casa.

The directive on packaging and packaging waste had originally entered into force in 1994.

For Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia the deadline remained the same; for Poland it is now 2014 and for Latvia 2015.

The EU has very strict laws on waste and a lot of waste is generated by packaging. EU law imposes tough targets for the recovery and recycling of packaging and packaging waste. Between 50 - 65 per cent of packaging waste by weight should be recovered while 25 - 45 per cent should be recycled. Moreover, a minimum of 15 per cent of each different packaging material must be recycled.

Malta is still quite far from achieving these targets.