Waste recycling project at Lower Barrakka

A total of 250 households in the Lower Barrakka area, in Valletta are to be involved in a waste separation, collection and recycling initiative being launched on Wednesday between Greenpak, the operators of the Green Dot system in Malta, and the Valletta local council.

Products which carry the Green Dot mark show that their importers or producers agree to collect and recycle the amount of packaging they are putting on the market.

Under the scheme, 11 sets of three medium-sized, colour-coded bins are being set up in residential blocks for the deposit of glass, metal and plastic packaging waste. Residents will be asked to separate their packaging waste at home and deposit it in these bins.

The packaging collected would then go to Green Skip Services Ltd which would see to the recycling of the packaging. Although certain things would be recycled locally, other material would have to be exported.

Engineer Mario Schembri, promoter of Greenpak, said yesterday the project would go on for two months.

The results would be used by Greenpak, which was financing the project, to make a stronger case at the Eco Tax Commission, where it was requesting that its members - the operators of the Green Dot system - be exempt from eco-taxation.

The Green Dot concept is currently used in 24 European countries as the financing mark for ecologically and economically efficient packaging recycling.

The aim of the pilot project was to show that the private sector could solve its own problems, Mr Schembri said.

Any profit made by Greenpak at the end of the year would lead to a reduction of fees or be ploughed into educational campaigns.

Once the two months of the pilot project were over, Greenpak intended to extend the scheme to other areas in the capital, including the commercial sector. Greenpak, Mr Schembri said, had been promoting the Green Dot concept for the past two years.

Malta had EU obligations to recycle 27 per cent of its waste by the end of this year, he said. But less than one per cent had been recycled as yet so it would be impossible for target to be met.

Mr Schembri said that in spite of a legal notice issued earlier this year, placing responsibility on producers and importers to recycle their waste, nothing had been done.

There were another two schemes Greenpak intended to try out in different areas in future. One was the door-to-door collection scheme whereby residents would be given colour-coded bags to separate packaging from other waste at home. The other scheme was the introduction of packaging deposit banks where large bins, located in public areas, would be provided for plastic, glass, metal and cardboard packages.

Members of Greenpak would pay set fees according to the amount and type of packaging they put on the Maltese market and the scheme would recycle, as a minimum, the targets that would be established. This would work out cheaper than the eco tax for the importers and producers.

Mr Schembri said that through the scheme importers or producers become members of an umbrella organisation, in this case Greenpak, whatever the nature of their business.

The organisation would then run the collection and recycling scheme on their behalf.

Twenty-eight companies had already paid their license fees to become members and many more expressed an interest. As yet, they were only paying for the use of the trade mark and the pilot project was being totally financed by Greenpak.

Mr Schembri said that Greenpak was requesting exemption from eco taxation for the Green Dot members. The company made two presentations to the Eco Tax Commission on October 25 and November 8 and although the commission's reaction was positive, understanding the need for such an encompassing scheme, it was still unknown whether such an exemption would be granted.

Greenpak, Mr Schembri said, was not willing to accept partial exemption, since this would be complicated to administer and manage. It would also increase costs unnecessarily.