What's in it for me?

It is rare to read so pathetic a letter in your columns as that of Anthony Guillaumier (December 18).

Mr Guillaumier resents having to separate his refuse into glass, paper, plastic and metal because he will be facilitating its recycling by "a company whose ultimate aim is to make a profit from refuse". Mr Guillaumier equates easing our environmental problem through sorting his refuse out and disposing of it in a skip with "being employed (on no salary) with a company whose ultimate aim is to make a profit".

This attitude is really quite disgusting. At long last there appears to be a positive development in regard to our fearsome refuse problem and there is already somebody who is intent on wrecking the project through sheer selfishness. Mr Guillaumier's reaction is "what is in it for me?" He doesn't care a fig about the environment. What counts is that Mr Guillaumier cannot personally profit from the small task of sorting out his garbage at home, so he will not have anything to do with it.

First of all, Mr Guillaumier is not being asked to sort out other peoples' refuse but only his own. Up until now he has had the privilege of having his assorted garbage being collected from his doorstep. This ultimately landed in dumps which have grown to unmanageable proportions and now threaten our health and the ecology of our islands. Something has to be done. If Mr Guillaumier does not want to cooperate in a small way to help improving matters then, maybe, he should stop generation refuse altogether. Thus he will not need to sort it out in the first place. His mind will also be at rest that the recycling company will not make a profit at his expense.

Secondly, would anybody in his right mind expect a company to come forward and offer to do the nasty work of recycling Malta's garbage for no profit? Mr Guillaumier seems to think so and yet he himself does not want to do his bit for the environment lest somebody else might profit. He even has the audacity to say he is only prepared to sort out his refuse "if the company is dedicated exclusively to the environment and run by volunteers" but if the company is profit-making he is not going to help the company to make a "tidy profit".

It is exactly this kind of monumental selfishness in regard to the environment that has led to the degradation of our island. If everybody thought like Mr Guillaumier then the prospects for Malta would be very gloomy indeed and our garbage problem would be here to stay.

Let us hope there are not too many people who share Mr Guillaumier's attitude.