For some time now, I have been observing the plethora of incentives/measures being introduced by the government (some budget-related, others not) with a critical eye, and it seems to me they lack a coherent strategy.

Some of the measures even seem to defeat the purpose they were intended to achieve. I cannot pinpoint the reasons for this but it may be down to incompetence, or the need to appease a section of the population (generally to the detriment of the rest), or because the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. It may also be the case that the government doesn’t have the time to think things through, or maybe some measures appear to be more politically “sexy” than others, or a combination of the above.

Sometimes it also seems as though the government is trying to have a go at everything, possibly in the hope that something will work. I can cite renewable energy as an example. We are simultaneously trying out (and investing hundreds of millions of euro in) offshore wind farms, onshore wind farms, PVs, solar water heaters, the electricity interconnector, biogas technology and now also incineration, but do we know which technology works best for Malta, and therefore provides the best return on investment? In these difficult times, shouldn’t we be setting priorities based on cost-effectiveness?

Some other examples: 2011 should see the introduction or a reformed public transport service, a most welcome measure. I think there is national consensus on the need to have a clean, efficient, customer-friendly public transport system for these car-crazy, traffic-congested islands. I understand that one of the main objectives of this ambitious project is to encourage people to make more use of buses, and therefore reduce the dependency on the car.

This is a noble objective. Indeed, it is imperative that this reformed service manages to attract a critical mass of passengers that will make it cost-effective and commercially viable.

How then does one explain the fact that the government will reimburse first-time buyers to the tune of €1,000 if they buy a new car? Why is it subsidising the purchase of new cars, which will now compete with the reformed public transport sector? Why are we subsidising one mode of transportation to compete with another subsidised sector of transport? What message are we giving to the population? To buy a new car or use the buses?

Another example: The last few years have seen the introduction of hundreds of waste-recycling bring-in sites, followed by the introduction of the “Recycle Tuesdays” scheme. I understand that the material collected from the latter scheme requires more post-collection processing than the former, because whereas the former receives waste separated at source in the four separate categories (paper, metal, glass, plastic), the latter contains all mixed recyclable fractions (except glass). The government is heavily subsidising both schemes as there is no waste tariff. Of course, in terms of absolute amounts of waste collected, two schemes are better than one, but having two schemes running in parallel is more costly than having a single efficient cost-effective scheme. Has anybody realised that, in all probability, the two schemes are competing with each other rather than being complementary? Isn’t it the case that a significant number of bring-in sites have suffered a reduction in waste received because a significant part of its “market share” has been taken over by the Recycle Tuesdays scheme? Can the country afford the luxury of subsidising both schemes? Isn’t it time to evaluate their performance and decide on a single effective scheme — and save the taxpayer millions of euro a year?

Two years ago an eco-tax on plastic bags was introduced. A hare-brained scheme, if you ask me. Has the scheme eliminated the use of plastic bags for the collection of rubbish from our doorsteps? No, in the main, we still use plastic bags to take our rubbish out for collection and there will still be the demand for millions of plastic bags a year as long as we retain the current waste collection scheme. Unfortunately, the eco-tax programme has resulted in replacing millions of (generally lightweight) degradable plastic bags with handles with millions of heavier non-degradable plastic bags without handles, to the detriment of the consumer (no handles) and the environment (heavier non-degradable plastic instead of degradable plastic). The only ones better off are supermarkets who sell more refuse plastic bags.

Pumping millions of euro into the environment doesn’t necessarily get us up the ladder towards sustainability. The efficacy of every incentive should be measured against the results obtained and not by the amount of taxpayers’ money pumped into the problem. Indeed, I feel that the government should be putting more thought into solving problems, rather than throwing money at them.

Ing. Cremona is a water treatment engineer and hydrologist by profession with an interest in sustainability issues.