Without serious enforcement any plan to manage waste will remain "an attractive wish list", according to Environment Minister Leo Brincat.
He delivered the warning this morning while addressing a meeting of the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development that discussed the draft waste management plan released last month by the Ministry.
Mr Brincat insisted the plan wanted to reduce the dependency on engineered landfills to dispose of waste by putting greater emphasis on waste separation. "Waste separation has to be taken seriously for any waste management plan to succeed."
In a brief introduction for which the media was invited, Mr Brincat said 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 puts 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 advisor who is coordinting the waste strategy said only 23 per cent of waste was being separated and this had to go up to 50 per cent by 2020.
"The gap with the EU target is still wide and we can only bridge it if everybody contributes," he said.
Mr Gatt said a new engineered landfill will 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.
The meeting continued behind closed doors.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com