University rector Alfred Vella has urged students to read up on sustainability, with a heartfelt plea for this to be taken seriously in Malta.
In his customary opening address at the start of the academic year, Prof. Vella said that when it came to sustainability, the country's grades were far from perfect As.
He urged students to make sustainability a cornerstone of their learning, in a bid to help save the island for this, and future generations.
To do so, we would have to keep waste generation to a minimum, said rector Vella. "Religious commitment" to the five R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, residual management) was a good place to start, he said.
The rector spared the island no punches in his review of its environmental efforts.
Waste: Malta, he said, had the poorest record of the EU member states in the recycling of waste, with only eight per cent recycled or composted.
Renewable energy: Malta had the lowest renewable electricity generation of all the EU. Only six per cent of the island's energy needs derived from renewable sources in 2016.
Water: Malta, he said, regularly faced what is technically known as “water scarcity”. The country was among the most water-scarce countries in the world. Only 23 million m3 of groundwater are available for extraction and use, but consumption is estimated to be about 65 million m3.
Physical space: Malta is the EU country that is most suffocated with buildings and other artificial land use. The average fraction of man-made land cover for the EU is five per cent, while in Malta it stood at 24 per cent back in 2015.
"Clearly, the quality of life of its citizens is affected negatively by the fact that it is almost impossible to take a break from the built environment while you remain on the islands," he said.
"I am unsure which of these grave environmental challenges is the most serious for us today; or if these are each less serious than the general apathy that seems to grip our collective mind to prevent us from taking seriously our commitment towards environmental sustainability."
More than 4,500 new students
The University of Malta started its new academic year on Monday, with more than 4,500 new students.
In a statement, the university said 3,216 students would be following undergraduate courses during the 2018/19 year, while 1,356 students would be reading for postgraduate degrees.
Another 818 new students will be joining Junior College, to bring the total number of students to 1,727.
Nearly 1,000 international students from some 113 different countries will be pursuing studies at the University this year.
In all 11,860 students are enrolled at the Msida campus, of these 4,780 are male and 7,080 female, following a total of 887 different courses on offer.