Malta gets a good clean-up

Around 75 locations were cleaned up over the weekend to mark Clean Up the World Day.

The clean-up operations were carried out by local councils, schools, private companies and even MPs, including Rural Affairs and the Environment Minister George Pullicino, who targeted Pembroke yesterday afternoon.

The MPs were also joined by the British and Australian High Commissioners and their wives.

Mr Pullicino described the clean-up operation on Friday as "impressive" after Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) employees attacked the periphery road between MEPA and Marsa - four skips were filled with rubbish in the space of 90 minutes.

The minister acknowledged that there was a local culture of littering and was taking action to eradicate it through the introduction of harsher fines and plain-clothes wardens.

By the end of next year, Mr Pullicino hoped to see a difference in the attitude to littering. For the first three months, perpetrators would only be warned, but these warnings would be logged. If, after June, they were caught littering a second time, they would have to pay for their first offence too.

Mr Pullicino was particularly pleased with the involvement of schoolchildren, which had been encouraged. At a clean-up activity in Pretty Bay on Friday, he said the children were not only collecting waste, but also separating it.

In a "double exercise", they were being involved in public cleansing, as well as learning about waste separation - which tied in with the recent launch of the project Waste Separation at Source in Schools, involving 50,000 students.

The idea was to catch them young and ingrain in them the importance of the environment and of safeguarding it.

In view of this, Xummiemu Club members yesterday met and participated in activities organised by WasteServ at St James Cavalier.

The event included environment-related educational games; creativity demonstrations by artist Joseph Barbara, using recycled material, including plastic bottles, which are a hazard to the environment; and a swap shop where children could exchange old toys rather than dispose of them. Prizes were also presented for a drawing competition.

During the event around 1,000 children were entertained by environment hedgehog mascot Xummiemu and a team of animators.

Since Xummiemu was revived last June by the Environment and Rural Affairs Ministry, in collaboration with WasteServ, the club has attracted 2,000 members.