Still struggling to remember which bag to leave outside your doorstep every morning?

Bin It is meant to make people’s life easier when handling garbage bags.

Despite a nationwide educational campaign that followed last year’s unveiling of the new waste separation scheme, for many the struggle remains real. To make matters worse, the new regulations come with the potential of being fined anything between €150 and €500 for taking out the wrong garbage bag at the wrong time, as the ‘grace period’ came to an all-too-abrupt end in January.

Seven students came together to address the matter by developing an application that allows people to know which bag to leave outside and what it should contain.

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Delicata, a member of the group, said the 16-year-old students realised it was quite a “hassle” for their parents trying to remember what bin bag to put out every morning. 

And, faced with the challenge of developing an innovative project as part of the Young Enterprise programme, the budding entrepreneurs quickly decided to address environmental concerns.

“We decided we wanted to minimise the effort of having to separate waste. It seemed to be what people wanted and needed,” Mr Delicata said.

The mobile application, dubbed Bin It, was launched with the aim of helping people carry out their environmental responsibilities without having to make an effort to remember which bag to take out every morning.

We wanted to minimise the effort of having to separate waste. It seemed to be what people wanted and needed

While local councils provided leaflets on  the new regulations, many still found it a problem to grasp the new rules. 

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The application removes the need for the distribution of informative leaflets, which would often end up thrown away and, ironically, creating more waste, Mr Delicata said.

The app notifies people of the days and times for collection of different waste streams in their specific localities each morning. Initial reactions indicated people were already keen on the idea, with 300 downloads being recorded in one week alone, he said.

The initiative could not have come at a better time, with statistics increasingly showing Malta still has a long way to go before it can claim to be an environmentally-friendly country. 

Municipal waste figures show only a slither of the country’s waste was recycled until 2017. More than 90 per cent of municipal waste was going to the landfill in 2017.