Updated 12.30pm, adds government statement

Senior members of the environment watchdog fear Malta’s waste management system would fail a review by the European Commission, raising concerns that the situation had got out of hand.

Sources within the Environment and Resources Authority told The Sunday Times of Malta that if the European Commission were to probe the country’s various waste facilities over the past two years, Malta would likely be in violation of the EU’s Waste Directive, which sets the rules on how waste should be managed across the EU.

“The situation needs to be addressed with urgency now. We are in violation of European requirements and the situation is piling up,” said one ERA source privy to the waste management “crisis”. 

Among the issues flagged at recent ERA board meetings, were shortcomings at the facilities run by state agency Wasteserv, where a lack of adequate data collection on what types of refuse and how much of it is being processed has raised alarm bells. 

One ERA board meeting discussed the case of white goods allegedly being illegally bulldozed and buried at the Magħtab landfill.

The dumping of other waste containing heavy metals at an illegal temporary facility in Iklin was also discussed.

Cases of separated waste which had been mixed again had also been discussed at a number of meetings.  

One source said the ERA board felt relatively powerless to take action. 

“We can suspend Wasteserv’s environmental permits on its sites, however, since this is an essential state service then it would simply ignore this and continue to operate illegally without the necessary permits. We could also take Wasteserv’s bank guarantees, but since this isn’t their money, but taxpayers’ money, they probably would not even care,” the source said. 

This was why senior members of ERA were encouraging Environment Minister José Herrera to brief Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on the “ticking time bomb” in Malta’s waste management facilities and get him to muck in.

However, The Sunday Times of Malta is informed that Dr Herrera and Dr Muscat have already held a number of meetings to discuss the “major challenges” in Malta’s waste management.

Replying to questions, a spokesman for Dr Herrera said the matter was an issue of “national importance”.

A number of tough decisions needed to be taken, and had already been taken to address the situation, he said, adding that many of these would yield results in the coming years. 

A government source who has worked on plans to turn the tide of rubbish around, offered a glimpse into the situation. 

“The greatest problem is that of exporting waste and the difficulties we face there. Also, in the reality we live in today, with population growth, increased consumption, increased construction waste… it is obviously putting a huge strain on our resources,” he said.

The ERA sources meanwhile said the government needed to invest in existing waste management facilities to bring them up to scratch as a matter of urgency.

Essential infrastructure was sorely lacking, and “broken systems” needed to be addressed.   

“How can we have landfills and other sites that do not have the ability to ascertain how much waste is being dumped there? This is a situation that has persisted for several months now,” they said. 

Earlier this month, Dr Herrera said he would hold a “face-to-face” meeting with the operators of electronic waste collection schemes, who he said were partly to blame for one of Wasteserv’s breaches of environmental and planning regulations, in some activities.

The meeting is yet to be held.  

Waste not, want not

Next year, the European Commission will assess Malta’s efforts to combat the rising tide of municipal waste.

In 2018, Brussels had already warned that the country risked failing the now-imminent 2020 EU waste recycling targets. 

Malta has one of the highest levels of waste generation in the EU – around 642 kilos per person per year.

Under the EU targets, at least 55% of municipal waste must be recycled by 2025, rising to 60% by 2030. Next year, the Commission will grade Malta on its efforts to reach those targets.

In 2017, just 8% of the county’s waste was recycled or sent for composting, with the rest disposed of at the Magħtab landfill.

The government has pledged to build a new €150 million waste-to-energy plant at the site of the existing Magħtab plant. However, this is not scheduled for completion until 2023.

The incinerator is planned to process 40% of Malta’s waste, with the rest being recycled, although this recycling rate is not envisioned to be reached by the time the plant is operational.

Government statement

In a statement on Sunday, the government said it had always declared that waste management was a challenge of national importance and one that merited prioritisation. Relevant and timely decisions were and would continue being taken, and it was this government which took the necessary, bold and long-awaited decisions to steer the sector from spiralling completely out of control.
 
This government had directed Wasteserv to start the process for Malta to have a waste-to-energy facility of its own to convert non-recyclable waste into energy generation after this had been on the agenda since 2008.
 
It was only recently that a new dedicated agency was set up for Resource, Recovery and Recycling – an agency managing the framework and setup of a Beverage Container Refund Scheme that would see some 200 million beverage containers made up of plastic, metal and glass being source segregated for better recycling.
 
Other important decisions were also taken to curb the use of single use plastics. The government had already made it public that in 2021, the importation and production of single use plastics would be banned in the context of the single-use strategy prepared by the Environment and Resources Authority and the ministry, for which Malta was one of the first to put pen to paper and publish a draft strategy which is currently being revised to be published soon.
 
The introduction of the organic bag on a national scale was another important project, seeing over 27,000 tonnes of organic waste which used to be collected in black bags now being separated at the source. This initiative resulted in a reduction of 22.9% of waste in the black bag.
 
The ministry categorically denied “unfounded statements” made by sources stated to originate from ERA, that Wasteserv “has lack of adequate data collection on what types of refuse and how much of it is being processed”, and on “white goods allegedly being illegally bulldozed and buried at the Magħtab landfill”.
 
Although the government acknowledged that waste management was a national challenge and the right decisions had to be taken, it was a sector whereby through the policies and implementation measures being adopted in a more holistic approach, Malta could manage to improve drastically in the upcoming months and years.