In one way or another Malta now urgently needs to commit itself to meeting the obligations of the EU packaging directive. This means diverting a growing percentage of cartons, bottles, tins, boxes, plastic wrappers, etc. - for which manufacturers and importers are now responsible - away from the Maghtab dump.

Most of this recovered waste must be recycled according to present targets, which are soon to be raised even higher. In a little more than a year from now Malta will be obliged to recover over half the amount of packaging waste entering the waste stream.

Wary of its commitments, Government has set up WasteServ Malta Ltd to begin implementing a waste strategy that harmonises us with the rest of Europe. If waste management is currently dominated for the most part by Government, how ready is the private sector to get involved and how much is Government, in turn, prepared to allow it to take over?

A timely workshop was held last month, hard on the heels of the Budget, encouraging Maltese industry to set up a self-financed scheme, similar to the Green Dot started in Germany, to meet EU packaging waste directive obligations.

The accession date is just around the corner and isolated endeavours to implement one of the most complex directives are simply not an option. Government is nervous about meeting waste targets within the specific timeframe and may yet recognise the long-term cost of not allowing time for the private sector to see the opportunities that come with the new responsibilities.

Following the announcement on Budget night of the Finance Ministry's "eco contribution" tax on waste, local industry has been offered a last-minute reprieve.

Opening the second Maltese-German workshop held on the EU packaging waste directive, the Minister for Resources and Infrastructure hinted that the eco tax could be adjusted depending on how much producers, fillers and importers accepted responsibility for the packaging waste they released onto the market.

If Finance Minister John Dalli's eco tax turns out to be the spur which drives industry to opt for the Green Dot as a self-help alternative, then it will have been a worthwhile budgetary measure.

Stakeholders' alliance

The idea that producers can conserve natural resources and accept responsibility for their own packaging waste has become an integral part of environmental policy in Europe.

The Green Dot scheme started as an experiment in 1990 as an alliance of stakeholders to meet the European Packaging Directive in the most economically efficient way. Today the scheme operates in 20 countries, including Canada, fulfilling waste management goals and triggering change in the minds of consumers.

The Green Dot symbol is not a recycling label but a trademark, the most widely used trademark in the world supported by 98,000 licensees in Europe and Canada.

The Green Dot scheme has shown that its costs successively decline. Companies will pay a sliding fee for the right to use the trademark on their packaging in the knowledge that their responsibilities on waste management are being met at the lowest possible cost through this self-applied co-operative scheme.

As more and more industry partners co-operate by joining the scheme, the cost is shared and the licence fee, based on weight not volume, goes down. Waste producers may exempt themselves from paying an "eco contribution" by becoming members.

There is also a steering effect. Costs for handling packaging waste in a manner compatible with the directive can be reduced further if a product is packed in a less environmentally harmful material and the licensing fee scale lowered accordingly.

Steering a change in consumer consumption habits is another environmental payback. If a Maltese operator joins the GreenPak scheme his legal obligations to meet the directive are transferred to the umbrella organisation.

But if industry holds back, preferring to stick with the business-as-usual mentality, then operators will fall prey to eco taxes without any help towards facing up to their waste responsibilities that will not go away.

GreenPak licensing fees are to go directly into covering the costs of recovery and recycling at the minimum possible cost for industry. The scheme is a tried and tested formula that will enable Government and industry to meet their EU commitments.

The directive gives every country the space to find its own way to meet the targets.

Following the principle of uniformity in diversity, the various national Green Dot organisations each have their own special features. The Grüne Punkt used in Germany has been roughly translated as EKO-KOM in the Czech Republic and Envi-Pak in Slovakia.

Portugal has named it the Sociedade Punta Verde and the symbol for the Green Dot, recently launched in Malta, is to be GreenPak. All carry the swirling green dots of the original symbol used on products all over Europe.

In a common market this joint financing symbol ensures free movement of goods. Eight out of 13 candidate countries have already introduced the Green Dot. Malta's launch of the Green Pak scheme raises the figure to nine with Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Estonia still out in the cold.

For Mario Schembri, manager of the consultancy firm AIS Environmental Ltd and head of the Malta Institute of Waste Management, it all started three years ago. An early bird in assessing the impact of the directive, it was a natural progression for Ing. Schembri, an engineer by profession, to move to the role of catalyst in its implementation.

Ing. Schembri replied to probing from some industrialists at the workshop on any commercial-based interest his company might have in setting up the Green Dot scheme in Malta:

"GreenPak is a non-profit making organisation. If it should attempt to profit by not turning all its funds collected to management of the waste produced by its members then the Malta Environment and Planning Authority will withhold authorisation and the mother organisation, PRO-Europe, will disown the scheme."

It is hardly likely that this will be allowed to happen. There has been too much personal and professional effort invested in establishing contacts with the European scheme and rocking Maltese industry to get busy recycling its packaging waste under its own terms before the other less attractive alternatives close in.

AIS Environmental plans to move out eventually so that the Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Industry, recyclers and collectors can run the scheme.

Addressing participants from business and industry at the workshop Ing. Schembri said: "If we are able to show that the private community can take on board commitments that are at the moment with government organisations, then there is no reason why we should be penalised by an eco tax."

Industries at Mosta Technopark, already in the first wave of companies to promote recycling initiatives, are to be the first to support and participate actively in the scheme.

"It is now up to everyone to get around the table so that we will not have any more eco taxes in future," was the general reaction from Maltese industry.

Taxes and technology transfer

The experience of industry in member states has been that eco taxes invariably turn out to be costlier than self-imposed fees paid to a waste management scheme set up by industry, such as the Grüne Punkt. Denmark stands isolated as the only EU member state without a solution generated by private industry for packaging waste.

The secretary general of PRO-Europe, the packaging recovery umbrella organisation for Green Dot, said Denmark had stayed out of the scheme, choosing instead to approach the problem the old way - the taxation way. Joachem Quoden pointed out that current taxes in Denmark are among the highest in Europe.

Denmark's packaging tax meant no involvement by industry, no producer responsibility, an 'easy' solution that cost more than the Green Dot licence. And only a part of the tax was going to financing recycling.

He said that where the Green Dot scheme was adopted subsidies could be used in the early stages to help start it up. "We lowered the financial burden by €580 million over the past five years. It is not easy to find similar examples of tax reduction of 25 per cent."

The Chamber of Commerce noted the adverse effect on competitiveness of further taxation and the many opportunities provided by the packaging waste directive. "Whether we take full advantage of this is entirely up to us," chamber president Reginald Fava said.

Candidate country Cyprus, which joined the Green Dot scheme in October, turns its waste paper into boxes for export.

A speaker from the Czech Republic showed how the Green Dot system was set up in that country. The message from Portugal was: "Do it in a planned way. Don't rush."

The Dutch are running into trouble. The present voluntary agreement in operation in Holland, which has held back from adopting the Green Dot system, is now considered by the EU Commission not to be in agreement with the packaging waste directive.

German Ambassador Georg Merten spoke on Malta's integration in a unified Europe. The targets are very demanding, even for countries with years of experience in recycling.

Older EU member states had ironed out their problems in achieving the targets and could provide information to make the catching up process easier for Malta.

Ambassador Merten observed that Malta had particular circumstances of strong heat in summer and high transport costs for shifting recyclables, which compounded the waste problem.

The FOI says it has long been plagued by disincentives, such as government-induced costs and the high rate of inland transport. Transporting a container of material for recycling to the port costs nearly as much as shipping it abroad, a huge disincentive to firms trying to recycle waste.

The German-Maltese Chamber of Commerce took note of the new reality for Maltese industry, which needed to find ways to put Malta on the map for German firms to come to Malta. The regional manager for Germany's Association for the Promotion of International Technology Transfer (ITUT), Wilhelm Kulke, said that following dialogue with the ministry, industry and municipalities in Malta the demand for information in Malta on how other countries were handling the problem was evident.

Speakers from countries with similar problems to our own could be invited to share insights but Malta had to seek its own particular way to deal with the packaging waste problem.

Waste directive and incineration

The Directive has been in force in member states for a good ten years and revisions are in the pipeline. Transposed as legal notice 337 of 2003, still in draft form, it requires that nearly all recovered waste be reused or recycled.

Recycling targets are spread evenly across glass, paper, metal and plastic, and will rise in the near future to 65 per cent for each material. Malta has been given a transition period for meeting the plastics target.

As the directive requires higher amounts of packaging to be recovered from the waste stream than it requires being recycled, the remaining portion that is not recycled may be composted or incinerated.

In the absence of a mass burn incinerator, Malta would therefore need to adopt recycling as its main strategy for dealing with packaging waste. The availability of an incinerator would not help much either as minimum recycling targets would still need to be met.

In the new revisions, the minimum recycling targets will increase from 25 per cent to 55 per cent as from 2008, making the case for an incinerator in this context even more difficult to justify.

"We are looking at a very high level of recycling and there is no time or money to experiment. This time next year we may not be achieving the targets but at least we will have started," Ing. Schembri said.

Building the waste infrastructure

WasteServ constitutes a significant piece in the unfolding puzzle of how industry can fund its waste solutions while staying in the driver's seat.

Some have tended to be suspicious of WasteServ as a competitor infringing on the waste recycling business that could be handled by private industry. Christopher Ciantar, who heads strategy, communications and development for WasteServ Malta Ltd, insists that the company is not in competition with any private initiative.

Like AIS Environmental Ltd, WasteServ, staffed by government employees, says it would be happy to hand over recycling to the private sector but must do the job if no one else is willing.

WasteServ plans to have at least one bring-in site in every locality by this time next year for people to deposit their separated waste. The retail sector alone produces almost 69 per cent of all packaging waste.

What incentive would the public have to bring recyclable waste to the bring-in sites was the first question asked at the workshop. An understanding that keeping waste out of the garbage river that flows to landfill or incineration is likely to generate the highest level co-operation from the public. Do we expect to be paid for using litter bins? It is simply everyone's duty to recycle.

WasteServ Malta Ltd is in the process of building the infrastructure to help implement the waste directive. The plan is to disassemble Sant'Antnin Composting Plant and construct a materials recovery facility with a through-put of 36,000 tonnes per annum at a cost of €1.5 million.

Funds are being sourced for this facility, which will process separately collected recyclables from households. The company is currently seeking out pre-accession technical assistance on compiling the necessary documentation for a Cohesion and Structural Funds application to receive further financial assistance on waste management.

This will put the company in a stronger position to provide technical information to local councils and other players.

Under structural funding a collection system for separated waste will be accompanied by an intense education campaign. The aim is to get local councils geared up for a national waste handling programme.

The European Social Fund is to be tapped to help spread awareness of waste separation techniques in the household.

Speaking on co-financing possibilities, Dr Ciantar said that industry might look at the opportunity to be part-owners. The simplest of the many funding possibilities might be to have a scheme co-financed through the Cohesion Fund with remaining investment costs raised jointly by industry and Government.

User concessions could be provided to industry in return for their financial contribution under the polluter pays principle.

Other players

MEPA has been engaged in a capacity building exercise to help meet the challenge of setting up a recycling culture involving every single member of the public. A public consultation exercise has been held over the draft legislation, which binds producers to provide facilities for the return of packaging at no cost.

If they do not, MEPA can charge fees for the administration of regulations.

The FOI said recycling was already done by some Maltese firms and this would continue to increase not just for environmental reasons but to retain a competitive edge.

The workshop was organised for the second year running by ITUT with the Malta-German Chamber of Commerce as one of the co-organisers. Co-chairperson Claudia Domel invited Maltese producers and recyclers to the next ITUT workshop on the logistics of implementing the directive in small countries.

So the industrialist will now have to choose between sitting tight while waiting for MEPA's extensive permitting regime and the eco tax to overtake him or acting now by supporting the industry-run GreenPak scheme which will buoy him in the rising sea of packaging waste.