Unwanted glass 'stored' in Żurrieq valley

Heaps of glass, mostly green soft drink bottles, were dumped at Wied Fulija in Żurrieq, Labour leader Joseph Muscat said yesterday.

But according to the government's waste management company, WasteServ, the glass was simply being stored there until it could be exported in bulk.

"We have enough waste for it to be an inconvenience but not enough for it to be feasible to recycle ourselves," WasteServ's CEO Vincent Magri said.

He added that for the glass to be exported, there had to be enough to fill up a whole ship, otherwise it would not be cost-effective.

Labour argued that such a dump was sending the wrong message to people who were making good use of bring-in sites to separate waste.

The Nationalist Party accused Dr Muscat of being irresponsible, superficial and only geared to shed doubt on the successful waste separation projects that had become popular in Malta and Gozo. The PN reminded Dr Muscat that the valley in question had been used as a dump by the Labour government in the 1970s and was closed in 1995 to be rehabilitated, as was done with the landfills in Magħtab and Qortin in Gozo.

An environmentalist who spoke to The Times said the problem with dumping the glass in the countryside was that it could get mixed with other waste and this could reduce the number of pieces that would remain good enough to be recycled.

Although Mr Magri agreed this could be the case, he pointed out that the dump was closed and it was being monitored to ensure such mixing did not occur. He added, however, that the company was planning to treat the glass before it was exported by crushing it and washing it. This would also increase its value.

He explained that this open storage procedure was not being used for plastic because this material could easily catch fire, as opposed to glass, which could not be damaged by the elements. Plastic is kept at the Sant'Antnin recycling plant, where it was sorted by hand and bundled up for export.

In most cases, companies were subcontracted to make the sale abroad but the market decreased in recent years because of international circumstances.

WasteServ said it had recently issued a call for expressions of interest to export the glass and received an "encouraging response".

Sources said there had been plans to group a number of islands in the Mediterranean together (including Cyprus and Mallorca) to create joint recycling projects. "Each island has enough mixed waste to be an inconvenience but none of us have enough of a particular type of waste to recycle. So the plan was for the countries to put their waste together and recycle a different type of waste in each country."

However, this had not yet materialised.

cperegin@timesofmalta.com