Measuring waste in human terms

On a visit to the Emirates last week I came across a socio-economic indicator of the recession which I had never seen used before. It had to do with waste generation and disposal. Refuse disposed in Dubai was down by 22 per cent last year. The decline in economic activity was cited as the main factor in the six-million tonne reduction of material taken to landfills, compared to 2008.

Abu Dhabi and Dubai are among the world's largest per capita waste generators. The 2009 reduction in waste was said to be evident across the waste spectrum - domestic, hazardous, construction and medical.

Each country has its particular characteristics. I would think that the decline in waste in the emirates was due to a severe slowdown in the area's frenetic construction industry. Building is still taking place. This is evidenced by multiple cranes scraping the high heavens as huge rise towers continue to be added to the local scene in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and in the large number of houses being built in compounds to extend the urbanisation of the desert.

Domestic waste will have diminished too as thousands of expatriate workers left the Emirates last year, laid off because of the recession-induced slowdown in construction. But the local media also attributed the cutback in waste disposal to more careful consumption. "In a slowdown, little goes to waste," ran a banner-headline in one of the Emirati newspapers.

It would be interesting if up-to-date waste disposal data were made available in Malta. We have had our own severe construction slowdown, and that should have affected disposal. But rather than guesswork we need broken down details. Generation of waste in Malta is high, posing one of the major problems our governments have to tackle, as evidenced by the notorious Luqa and Magħtab dumps. Was there any relief in the rate in 2009?

The likely answer is yes. Yet I very much fear that our really telling indicators of recession take a more human form. They relate to employment and to the level of living of thousands of families existing around the poverty line. A small builder, employing a team of three other workers, told me he was packing up and emigrating. He used to have work booked nine months ahead. Now he is idle.

He used to take direct orders, which have disappeared, and subcontracting from a firm employing 20 males. The firm has been shedding labour and has not subcontracted any job to my friend for months.

The unemployment trend was up throughout 2009. The trend is reflected in net movements in the number of those registering for a job, for jobs are lost and gained daily. There are those who give up and stop registering, after their unemployment benefits have run out.

Against all that there remain hundreds, possibly thousands who still operate underground. Their number has reduced, according to often repeated government declarations.

The most striking indicator of the recent recession and the weak growth of the economy, I believe, is the fresh concern with poverty. It is not by accident that this has burst into the open now, through the careful lips of Mgr Victor Grech, of Caritas. There are others who are joining in, recounting their encounters with poverty, such as a family being unable to replace a basic white goods requirement. Doctors, parish priests and MPs and other electoral candidates, all of whom visit householders regularly, have their own story to tell.

On its part the government has downplayed the call of a review of the minimum wage, saying that only some 10,000 earn it, anyway. Ministers also point out that direct investment is still coming in. One has to take in the whole scene and focus as objectively as can be on the priorities. New investment is a top priority to generate economic growth, which is crucially essential to our wellbeing.

Unfortunately it does not reach much towards the unskilled unemployed, and not at all to those on or below the poverty line. Seeing waste generation data would be useful, especially to work out a strategy of education against consuming wastefully. But the key indicators of the state we are in can best be expressed in human terms.