Local councils are using police or wardens to pry into garbage bags in order to identify residents who take out their refuse well before collection time, The Sunday Times has learnt.
Although local councils say they rarely resort to such a measure, the law permits police and wardens to rummage through residents’ trash for investigative purposes.
However, even though they go through refuse bags to find a shred of a document bearing someone’s name – on request of the local council – it may still not be accepted as sufficient evidence in a local tribunal.
Local Councils Association president Michael Cohen said he knew of cases when evidence from garbage bags was used in local tribunals as proof that a bag was taken out outside collection hours.
But the tribunal deemed it was not sufficient evidence for the illegal move prohibited under the Litter Act.
“Finding a document with someone’s name on it in a garbage bag does not mean that person placed the bag there. The bag could have been moved by someone else,” he said.
In a letter sent to The Sunday Times, a woman who works in Ta’ Xbiex questioned the local council’s legal right to check the contents of garbage bags.
Commissioner for Data Protection John Ebejer said that while it was illegal for people to go through other people’s rubbish, police and wardens had the legal power to do so for investigative purposes.
Ta’ Xbiex mayor Antoinette Vassallo said that rubbish sorting was a practice used by the council two or three times at most “as a last resort”.
She said the council had to resort to this measure after certain people insisted on taking out their black garbage bags outside collection hours – an illegal act that carries a €12 fine.
Ms Vassallo said this created an inconvenience for residents who had to face foul odours and bags torn by stray animals.
As the situation persisted and no one owned up to leaving the bags out, the council decided to ask officers to inspect them, in their presence, to catch the culprit, she said.
Mr Cohen said he did not agree with the practice of going through people’s rubbish bags even though one had to keep in mind circumstances faced by different local councils.
Asked what happened in cases when garbage was collected in the afternoon, when people had to leave for work early in the morning, he said a compromise had to be reached.
Mr Cohen said some localities had inconvenient collection times mainly because they were dictated by a refuse collector selected during a tendering process.
“Such councils should do their best to accommodate the needs of residents by, at least, ensuring there are enough skips where they can dispose of their rubbish without having to take it out too early,” he said.
Councils in the UK last week scrapped fines for certain ‘refuse offences’.