Waste management is a national issue which needs a culture change involving all society, be it government, the business community or the consuming public at large. To truly overcome this challenge, we simply cannot relegate this to a sectorial issue. It is of common concern and our collective responsibility.
In spite of growing public environmental awareness, along with some resultant initiatives and improvements, waste and littering remain a major and widespread problem.
Voluntary action out of civic duty or corporate responsibility by consumers and enterprise alike is always to be encouraged, just as any action taken by the government to address this problem. Clearly, though, we are still very far from where we should be.
The legal notice setting the path for the establishment of the Beverage Container Refund Scheme (BCRS), which is intended to be led and managed by the private sector, has just been published (LN 311 of 2020). Notwithstanding the challenges of ensuring the scheme is successfully introduced and sustained, it is good news for our environment.
It is however important for everyone to understand that the use and misuse of plastic and glass, along with aluminum and metal cans, goes way beyond the beverage industry. It will take a collective effort by everyone to increase recycling in a meaningful way.
Without delving into potentially controversial reasons as to why the beverage industry was initially singled out, ideally, we should have started from the outset with a holistic approach together with the formulation of a national strategic plan on how we intended to address all our waste management problems. This would have certainly made more strategic and chronological sense.
While supporting the BCRS, we should even more fundamentally be supporting a national drive towards the development of a broadly-encompassing circular economy for all packaging waste. This being an economic system aimed at reducing, and whenever possible eliminating, waste through the continued use of resources. It is about moving away from the current use and throw-away mentality to one of reuse and recycle, hence the concept of circularity.
But today’s reality is what it is, and we now need to move forward from where we all stand. At this juncture, one must give credit to the growing signs of this administration’s determination to move away from landfilling to a circular economy approach. Nonetheless, it is pertinent to highlight some key considerations.
On July 8, the environment minister announced the launch of a National Strategy for the Environment, a document published by the Environment & Resources Authority (ERA). This will see the development of policies that will carry Malta through to 2050 and will include strategies on waste management and working towards a carbon-neutral footprint.
A final draft is expected in the coming weeks and a public consultation is expected to be launched in September.
Undoubtedly, this is a most welcome announcement which deserves praise along with all the support necessary, even if launching a holistic plan while yet to establish our waste management strategy, after having already set in motion the eventual introduction of the compulsory deposit on beverage containers, would seem like having placed the proverbial cart before the horse.
Whereas waste management remains a challenging issue, the long-awaited waste management measures, including legislation, infrastructure and enforcement, have for long been too few and sporadic.
It will take a collective effort by everyone to increase recycling in a meaningful way
To better comprehend the situation here, one needs to delve back a few years and take a glance at the bigger picture.
Back in 2017, the government had announced that a Circular Economy Act was being drafted. This law has not yet seen the light of day, possibly signifying a rethink in approach.
In fact, in September 2018, the European Commission published a report on how EU waste rules are applied in Europe, presenting the challenges and way forward.
This report, referred to as an ‘early warning’ report in anticipation of EU 2020 recycling targets, cited “the lack of coordination between different administrative levels” as one of the reasons “progress was hampered” in Malta. The report consequently placed us at the bottom of the EU league with respect to recycling. (The EU’s Environmental Implementation Review published in 2019 noted that Malta’s recycling rate stood at six per cent in 2017).
Given Malta has come nowhere near the EU’s 2020 50 per cent waste-recycling target, it seems that this target has been pushed forward with Malta now needing to reach this target by 2025, going up to 60 per cent by 2030.
During 2018, the Resource, Recovery and Recycling Agency (RRRA) was established giving it clear responsibility for the development of a circular economy – with waste management being an integral part of any circular concepts and initiatives.
Hence the BCRS falls under the remit of the RRRA. This highlights the importance, more so considering the EU’s earlier concern over our “lack of coordination”, of the need to ensure synergies between ERA and the RRRA, while at the same time doing away with any potentially conflicting grey areas of responsibility between these two entities.
Learning from our past shortcomings and pitfalls, we certainly need to overcome the challenges that packaging waste continues to pose on our environment.
Therefore, as we now seem to have finally embarked on a long overdue holistic plan, one can only hope for a positive outcome to the recently announced National Strategy for the Environment, driving us towards the successful development of a circular economy.
This, of course, will require an unwavering political commitment along with the involvement of all stakeholders.
Norman Aquilina, Group chief executive, Simonds Farsons Cisk