GreenPak Coop, the largest waste recovery system in Malta, announced that 2016 was its best year yet.
This success follows increases in its membership base as well as increases in the tonnage of packaging waste collected and recycled. Last year also marked the first full year of GreenPak’s operation in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) scheme.
In the last quarter of 2016, GreenPak also launched Batree, its battery waste collection and recycling scheme. All this activity together with an efficient operations lead to GreenPak declaring the highest surplus to date.
During the annual general meeting held at Kooperattivi Malta in Qormi, GreenPak president Victor Galea said that its members had declared: “20,381, tonnes of packaging waste placed on the market of which more than 13,200 tonnes were recycled.”
The amount exceeded the minimum national target set at 55 per cent. Mr Galea said that GreenPak should be proud of this achievement and added that in its first year of operations, the WEEE scheme GreenPak had collected 568 of the 3990 tonnes of electronic waste declared by its members.
“The GreenPak Cooperative model is working well and GreenPak members should be proud to form part of this cooperative”.
“The 2016 operations have yielded the highest surplus of funds generated to date. The surplus equating to 32 per cent of fees paid will be distributed to the cooperative shareholders as patronage refunds,” Mr Galea added.
The financial results of GreenPak were audited by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
“GreenPak strengthened its leadership in waste recovery as the cooperative continued to develop three areas of activities, namely packaging waste, WEEE and the Batree schemes,” CEO Ing. Mario Schembri said.
Mr Schembri announced that over the next two years, GreenPak’s bring-in sites’ infrastructure will be upgraded while, by the end of this year, more than 500 battery recycling points will be available across Malta and Gozo.
“Looking ahead, GreenPak is conscious of Malta’s waste management road map and the ongoing changes in EU waste regulations. The landscape around us keeps changing yet we are confident and determined to provide Maltese companies with the best solution to fulfil their extended producer responsibility,” concluded Ing Schembri.
GreenPak’s elected new committee board is composed of Victor Galea, executive director of VJ Salomone Marketing Ltd; Denis Zammit Cutajar, CEO of P. Cutajar & Co. Ltd; Edward von Brockdorff, director of Von Brockdorff Imports Ltd; Pierre Fava, CEO of Kemimport Ltd; Brian Galea, general manager at GSD Marketing Ltd; Lionel M. Cassola, company secretary of G.A. Enterprises Ltd; Norman Aquilina, group chief executive at Farsons; and Peter Martin, director at Attard & Co. Food Ltd.
During the AGM, PwC were reappointed as auditors.