No dumping of plastic at landfills, material being stored for future fuel use, ministry says

WasteServ, the state waste management company, has insisted that it is not dumping plastic waste at its landfill sites in Maghtab, adding that plastic wasted that cannot be recycled is being stored for eventual use in the waste-toenergy plant.

The Malta Independent spoke to the environment ministry after being approached by two different sources who claimed that plastic waste was being landfilled at Ghallis. The sources said the plastic was being dumped in a landfill “near the old weigh bridge.”

A spokes person for Environment Minister Jose Herrera said the site being referred to was most probably the old Zwejra landfill.

The ministry said WasteServ is in fact storing material which in the waste management industry is called Refuse Derived Fuel.

“With the current options (lack of Waste to Energy infrastructure) and in line with environmental legislations, such material has to be exported at a considerable high cost in order to be used as fuel for other plants abroad,” the spokesperson said.

“WasteServ has identified a process whereby apart from export, a location has been identified to temporarily store such material in an engineered way which will then be mined and used as fuel for the Waste to Energy facility.”

Ta’ Zwejra is an engineered landfill, which means that the sides and bottom are covered with impermeable liners and it has a leachate collection system to protect the surrounding environment from pollution. It was the first engineered landfill developed in Malta for the disposal of such waste in a safe and sustainable way.

Back in February, the government had announced plans to build a waste-to-energy plant in Maghtab, which would process 40% of the country’s waste. The facility is planned to cost between €120 million and €150 million and will be a public-private partnership.

The process is expected to start next year and works are scheduled for completion by 2023.

Herrera had told journalists that the 5,000 square metre plant would process 114,000 tons of waste every year: all the waste that will be left over once the country reaches its recycling target of 60 per cent. To help in achieving this target, recycling at source will become mandatory with the introduction of new legislation.

It had been explained that the waste-to-energy project would use a system known as moving grate combustion, which is used at the vast majority of similar plants worldwide.

The Nationalist Party has criticised the project, saying that the government will start burning plastic in an incinerator, but the government insists that this project will have a minimal impact on air quality – in fact emissions would be lower than those coming from landfills.

The Ghallis landfill is expected to reach capacity within the next two years, meaning that a harzardouse material dump would have to take ordinary waste until the new plant is built.

Currently, only around 15% of waste is recycled. The government has embarked on efforts to increase this number, and is set to introduce a plastic bottle return scheme.

The government was also planning to introduce fines for households that do not recycle their waste.

Malta currently generates 647 kilograms of waste per person every year, above the EU above of 420 kilograms.