Environment Minister Leo Brincat insisted on serious enforcement to ensure the success of the country’s waste management plan.

Without enforcement, any waste management plan would remain “an attractive wish list,” he said.

He was speaking at the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development that discussed the draft waste management plan released by the ministry last month.

Mr Brincat insisted the plan aimed to reduce dependency on engineered landfills to dispose of waste by putting greater emphasis on waste separation.

No studies had been done to analyse the feasibility of waste incineration and export.

“It will be imprudent for me to form an opinion on these aspects of waste management unless there are cost-benefit studies done by independent experts with no personal or commercial interest in the sector,” he said.

The waste management strategy lays emphasis on better waste separation at household level. It suggests the segregation of food waste in a separate bag to ensure better efficiency when this is processed for compost at the recycling facilities.

Households today separate waste into two streams: recyclable waste that includes plastic, paper and metal and the rest, which is thrown away in the black garbage back.

Mr Brincat told the social partners it was the Government’s intention to open up the waste sector to private operators.

“We want Wasteserv to be the operator of last resort,” he said. However, he excluded the wholesale privatisation of the sector.

Kevin Gatt, the ministry’s technical adviser coordinating the strategy, said only 23 per cent of waste was being separated and this had to go up to 50 per cent by 2020.

He said a new engineered landfill would still be needed to supplement the strategy but the aim was to reduce the amount of waste produced and subsequently cut down the volume of waste requiring landfilling.