Wasteserv – the public entity entrusted with the island’s waste management – is insisting that the management of electronic waste is “all under control”, even though thousands of washing machines, television sets, water heaters and fridges are accumulating in various civic amenity sites.

Wasteserv employees responsible for these sites, as well as site users, complained to the Times of Malta about the “confusion and total mismanagement” of the electronic waste accumulated at the sites in the course of recent years.

“It seems that those who are responsible for exporting and storing this material have lost all control, as heaps of waste keep accumulating at our sites and no one bothers to collect some of it for export,” an employee at one of the sites complained.

“We do our utmost to free up space so that more of the waste can be kept at our sites. However, this is becoming a headache, and it seems that our creativity may be running out,” another employee said.

An on-site visit revealed piles of fridges, water heaters, computers and other domestic goods dominate, with little or no space to receive more e-waste. In certain areas, vehicles entering the sites find it difficult to manoeuvre, as the waste spills onto vehicular passages.

When contacted, a spokesman for Wasteserv denied that the waste management entity had lost control over the situation and insisted that there were no huge problems.

He said that while all such waste older than two years had already been exported, the private WEEE scheme operators (for e-waste) must normally resort to Wasteserv in order to complement their targets by taking tonnes of waste from civic amenity sites and disposing of it through export.

“Wasteserv would like to clarify that exporting all WEEE would negatively impact the current WEEE schemes,” the spokesman said. Looking at the positive, Wasteserv argued that the heaps of electronic waste accumulated at its sites could be attributed “to citizens becoming more environmentally conscious and having the disposable income available to change old goods.”

According to a recent EU-wide survey, Malta is classified as one of the member states recycling the least waste.

Wasteserv said that as of last November, more than 700 tonnes of electronic waste had been exported in 2017.

According to its spokesman, “WasteServ is also actively considering various options in order to reduce the duration of WEEE that is kept at the CA sites and is looking to further increase the collaboration with WEEE scheme operators.”