Waste separation postponed

Malta's long-awaited waste-separation-at-source scheme will not start on Tuesday as originally scheduled but has been postponed by a few weeks to give time to some local councils to overcome "teething problems" and for newly-sworn mayors and councillors to settle in.

This means that if an informed neighbour tells you the refuse truck will not be turning up as you carry out your bag of carefully-separated waste - it will not be an April fool's joke.

The Government had announced that, as from April 1, refuse trucks will be making a special collection for tin, plastic and paper, which are to be placed together in special bags available for free from local councils. The bags will be collected on Mondays in Gozo and Tuesdays in Malta.

The scheme, which follows a three-year-long process of discussion involving the Government, local councils and the industry, is now expected to start operating in some localities from April 14 in Gozo and April 15 in Malta, but some areas will initially be excluded.

Environment director Chris Ciantar explained that the Local Councils Association had asked the Government to postpone the scheme - mainly financed by the private sector - by a fortnight, since certain councils were only sworn in last Friday.

"One must appreciate that the Government was involved in talks with the association on a national level, and not the individual local councils," Mr Ciantar said.

He added that meetings were held between the mayors, the Government and Waste Serv last Monday and it emerged that some councils were experiencing teething problems.

When contacted, Local Councils Association president Michael Cohen said that local councils engaged contractors to collect waste and some could not cope with the extra weekly household collection over and above others for commercial outlets.

Meanwhile, environment NGO Friends of the Earth Malta (FOE) released a strong statement in which it expressed concern at the postponement of the scheme and questioned whether, given the size of Malta's population, a door-to-door separation scheme was required when there already were many bring-in sites.

Reacting to this, Mr Ciantar said the Government aimed to create a system that was tailored to suit Maltese citizens. "Until now we learnt that bring-in sites reach a sector of the population and we want to create a system to encourage another sector to participate," he said.

Friends of the Earth also questioned the timing for the scheme announced about a month before the March 8 general and local council elections.

The Government urged the public to liaise with the respective local council to keep in touch with developments as far as distribution of bags and collection days are concerned.