Environment Minister Jose Herrera blamed the operators of electronic waste collection schemes for the controversial decision of state agency Wasteserv to open a temporary facility in Iklin in breach of environmental and planning regulations.
Dr Herrera said the matter would be raised in the coming days in a face-to-face meeting with these operators.
“If there is too much electronic waste, I point my fingers at the scheme operators as they were paid to dispose of it but failed to do so. Wastserv, as the operator of last resort, had to take emergency measures so as not to leave a disaster. Wasteserv is not obliged to do so, and if [PN MP] Jason Azzopardi is bold enough, he must direct his criticism to the operators,” he said.
Dr Herrera was asked on the matter during a visit to the Salini Park in St Paul’s Bay, which is being extended by seven tumuli of land to a total of 140 tumuli, including the salt pans park.
On Tuesday, Dr Azzopardi uploaded footage on Facebook of a truck dumping white goods at the Iklin facility, in “blatant breach” of environmental laws.
This temporary storage site for electronic waste, located within the Bitmac Batching plant, has no planning permit and was slapped with an enforcement notice.
Though it does have an environmental permit, the amount of waste dumped there has already exceeded the 49-ton limit set by the Environment Resources Authority by more than 10 times.
Wasteserv has justified its conduct saying that had it not taken this course of action, it would have placed EU funds for the construction of a €22 million facility in Ħal Far in jeopardy.
When it was pointed out to Dr Herrera that this State agency should be leading by example, the minister blamed WEEE Malta Ltd and GreenPak Coop Society Ltd, which operate electronic waste collection schemes. He said that, for some reason, they were not exporting this waste, despite getting paid to render the service.
“In the coming days I will be meeting the operators to look into the matter, but I have a legal and political obligation to enforce the schemes,” he said.
'Absolutely not true' grey and black waste bags are being mixed
The environment minister was also asked for a reaction to Dr Azzopardi’s claim, in Parliament on Wednesday that grey domestic waste bags intended for plastic, paper and metal cans were being mixed with other forms of waste particularly black bags, defeating the whole purpose of separation.
According to Dr Azzopardi, this has been happening since July, when the equipment at the Malta north station at Magħtab broke down.
In his reaction, the minister denied this was the case and criticised successive Nationalist governments for not investing enough to have the right waste separation infrastructure.
While noting that government was taking steps to install the necessary equipment, he said it was “absolutely not true” that different streams of separated waste were being mixed.
Dr Herrera listed various initiatives taken by the government on waste management, including domestic waste separation, the plastic bottle return scheme and plans to have a waste-to-energy plant which would take 35% of the country’s waste.
He noted that, in 2017, the Opposition had refused the government’s invitation to be part of a Waste Management Committee and was only intent on shooting down every initiative without proposing alternatives.