As the country wallows in rising piles of domestic waste, out comes the Prime Minister asking the new Nationalist Party leader to accept the government’s invitation to the Opposition to join of a waste management committee. The appeal was repeated so many times that when the committee did meet, the most important thing to come out of the meeting was that the Opposition was not there.

The government says it wants to involve the Opposition in the handling of this oncoming crisis. It sounds like a positive idea. There are issues that rise above partisanship and waste management should be one of them. But Adrian Delia is cautious and with good reason.

He wants to know if the Opposition will take an active role in the committee’s decisions. He wants his party to help protect the environment but does not want to act as a smokescreen for the government or to have his agenda dictated to him.

Environment Minister José Herrera says the committee has been given until the end of the year to recommend what technology is to be used when the country builds a new waste management facility. With the Magħtab landfill on the verge of filling up, there is no time to lose. Dr Herrera described waste management as the biggest challenge ahead for the country.

The government’s plan is to build an incinerator that turns waste to energy by 2023. The committee is to recommend to the government how to implement a decision already taken. No wonder that Karol Aquilina, the PN spokesman on the environment, would have no part of it. With the emergence of Dr Delia, the government is again trying to get the Opposition on board. It begins to sound like a bait, because what exactly is the government consulting about if it has already decided to burn 40 per cent of the country’s waste?

Recycling experts have told this newspaper that incineration was “inevitable” as the country’s waste management crisis has gone too far to avoid incineration. Environmentalists may not like the idea, nor would anyone living close to where the incinerator will be located.

The dismal failures in Malta’s recycling efforts are visible for all to see. Nearly 90 per cent of all rubbish is sent to landfills. But there are problems elsewhere. Earlier this year, a shortage in construction waste disposal facilities was only temporarily solved when seven quarries were added to the disposal sites.

Civic amenity sites were last year piling up with electronic waste, supposedly due for export, and a plan for a Magħtab family park has given up its ghost as the former landfill was found to be still internally active.

There is more to solving the waste problem than an incinerator, contentious as that may be. With Maltese homes producing 25 per cent more garbage than national estimates predicted and with the island ranking sixth among the EU countries that generate the most waste per inhabitant, radical changes are required. It would take education, enforcement and, above all, discipline, words that, unfortunately, sound anathema to many.

A national effort on waste management requires bi-partisan cooperation. The government should reach out to the Opposition not just to sit on a committee but to draw up a joint, long-term national plan on how to deal with waste.