Rubbish trucks have dumped 40,000 tons less mixed waste in landfills this year, thanks to a new, stringent gate fee regime, according to WasteServ.

A total of 267,000 tons of mixed waste were dumped in the Magħtab landfill in 2022, and 223,000 tons were dumped in 2023 – 16 per cent less.

The new gate fees were first announced last year in an effort to incentivise commercial opera­tors to separate their waste before dumping it at WasteServ facilities and to reverse Malta’s historic trend of landfilling the vast majority of its waste.

“WasteServ noted that the gate fees for the commercial sector are already yielding a very positive result, with a 16 per cent decrease in mixed waste and exponential increases across the board in source segregated materials such as mixed recyclables, mattresses, wood and cardboard,” a spokesperson for the waste management company told Times of Malta.

Landfill waste is not separated or recycled and the government has recently been taking several measures to reduce it as much as possible.

Trucks pay a fee per tonne for dumping waste in landfills, and that fee will rise significantly further as from January 1, to further incentivise waste separation.

In 2023, each tonne of tyres cost €30 to dump. Next year it will cost €35.

The gate fee for textiles, wood and mattresses will rise from €30 to €40 per tonne.

The gate fees for the commercial sector are already yielding a very positive result, with a 16 per cent decrease in mixed waste

The gate fee for gypsum will rise significantly from €30 to €50, and the fee for expanded polystyrene and waste from electric and electronic equipment will balloon from €30 to €65.

The fees will continue to rise every year until 2037, when disposing of tyres will cost three times as much as it did this year, textiles will cost five times as much, gypsum will cost 10 times as much and waste from electric and electronical equipment will cost more than 15 times as much.

While the cost of dumping mixed waste is set to continue rising exponentially, the cost of recycled waste and organic waste will remain fixed €0.50 and €20 per tonne respectively.

WasteServ says the deterrent worked and more waste is being separated.

It said this year it saw a 47 per cent increase in cardboard that was separated for recycling instead of dumped in the landfill.

It also saw a 503 per cent increase in mattress separation and 136 per cent increase in wood separation.

In real numbers, 103,000 tons of mattresses were recycled this year, as opposed to 17,000 tons last year, and 3.6 million tons of wood was recycled as opposed to 1.5 million tons last year.

As from last June, WasteServ has been taking wood, tyres mattresses and Jablo to a newly opened separation facility in Ħal Far to process the materials and export them for recycling.

The gate fees only impact commercial operators that dump their waste directly at WasteServ facilities.

Door-to-door waste collection, bulky waste collection, dumping at civic amenity sites and roadshow truck collection services will remain free of charge.