Despite the chatter, facts still matter and sadly, once again, Malta finds itself in a bad place. The latest review of plastic waste management across the EU covering the period 2007 – 2017 identified Malta as one of Europe’s worst performers when it comes to reducing plastic use and waste.
While the average increase in EU plastic waste was just six per cent, in Malta it increased by nearly one third in the past ten years.
This reality places Malta fifth from bottom when it comes to matching rhetoric with action in the very simple, first step matter of reducing waste. True, four other states performed even worse. But this is utterly irrelevant as a ‘get out clause’ for Malta.
A random stroll in any part of Malta, Gozo or Comino will provide ample evidence of one of our dirty realities. Behind any wall, under any gulley, in any set of bushes, in any field, street or road, plastic (and other) dirt and waste abound. Our capacity (and willingness) to casually and unthinkingly toss our rubbish knows no bounds.
And this attitude and practice are exhibited throughout our economy and society.
As all too often, our assumption seems to be that someone else will clean up – the government, the council, nature, our neighbours, silly tourists etc. While we clean and polish our cars, houses, and steps until they gleam, we refuse to extend the practice to our larger neighbourhood.
Truth be told, our problems with plastic are but the tip of an enormous physical and mental iceberg that reflects a depressing and ultimately self-defeating disregard (even hostility) for our environment and for nature itself.
This reality increasingly threatens all our futures, especially those of future Maltese generations whom we profess to ‘love deeply’.
It is the height of hypocrisy to ask young people to respect the environment while adults continue to wreck the joint.
The anti-environment attitude is evident across all sectors of Maltese life and society including government, business and those structures tasked with protecting and enhancing the land we also profess to ‘love deeply’.
No amount of economic ‘progress’, wealth ‘generation’ and ‘money in our pockets today’ will make for a good life if the place in which we live becomes a tip. If our economic ‘miracle’ simply generates previously unheard off levels of inequality and environmental destruction, what’s the value for the bulk of our people?
Do we really think there is some ‘buy back our environment’ scheme into which our wealth will allow us to access in the future?
The debate is not about plastic bags (it’s a no-brainer that they should be banned without any delay) or about placing possible restrictions on other non-biodegradable products or even about electric cars or recycling as panaceas for our deepening mess.
Nor is the core debate about the responsibilities of our schools or education systems. To my mind it is the height of hypocrisy to ask young people and students to respect the environment while far too many adults continue to wreck the joint.
The debate on plastic represents a much deeper existential one which encompasses individual and collective attitudes to nature and the environment, our refusal to take the matter seriously and our insistence that the ‘common wealth’ that nature provides is actually ‘free’.
We continue to exhibit high levels of emotional resistance where, in moments of rationality we realise that our actions are ‘wrong’ but emotionally we simply cannot bring ourselves to cast off learned attitudes and behaviours. Our negative disposition towards nature is an addiction and needs to be approached as such.
Three further observations may be relevant in our search for the cure.
Because value is almost always now measured in monetary terms, anything that does not have a cash value is of secondary importance, if even that. As such, nature becomes something to be taken for granted. Because it has no economic value, it has no ‘real’ value.
In such a context, our relationship with nature is a technical one, problems can be ‘fixed’ technically with various ‘magic bullets’ we either have now or will have soon. This perspective is nothing short of an existential challenge, part of our ‘faith’ that humans are the dominant agency in life.
Despite protestations to the contrary, nature and the environmental crisis remain an ‘also ran’ story in our mainstream and social medias (the Times of Malta stands guilty). The issue is still perceived to be the preserve of ‘tree huggers’ and ‘greenies’ – people who don’t live in the ‘real’ world.
Our exalted and revered ‘growth’ model does not factor in the real cost of nature and its bounty; it has no sense of the danger of blowback from the abuse of nature and it chillingly denies it as a wealth held in common for all including future generations.
Plastic is indeed an issue – a big issue for it tells us so much about ourselves, our values and our priorities and, unless we fundamentally refocus our future.