Tax it, and dispose of it properly
We do not need a windy day to realise how dirty this country is. But when it is gusty, we get to realise better what we have already known for years and did nothing to change – the Maltese are unable to keep public areas clean in the same way that many of them keep their homes spotless.
The amount of thrash that is seen being blown around is unbelievable. Scraps of paper, empty packets, used tissues, cigarette butts – you name it, it’s there, flying around, hitting windscreens of cars and pedestrians, sometimes dangerously.
We seem to be unable to hold on to items we no longer need until we find a receptacle to dispose of them in the proper manner, or do so when we arrive at home or the office we work in. The fact that waste bins are hard to find, even in the most frequented public areas, does not help. But, given the way we are, it does not take much to believe that even if we had litter baskets every 10 metres, we would still find a way to keep the country dirty.
One huge contributor to the mess we find in our streets is the volume of junk mail that we all receive. Most of it does not even make it to our homes. There are many of us, unfortunately, who just drop them from the letter-box onto the pavement in front of the main door, and let them fly away. One can easily find out which residences are unoccupied, as piles of junk mail can be seen jutting out of their letter-boxes or accumulating on the doorstep.
Many of us are simply not interested in what we receive in unsolicited mail. Whether it’s promotional stuff, political propaganda or even vouchers for discounted items, many of us simply do not care. It is, of course, wrong to throw this unwanted material onto the road, but it is also wrong when delivery people ignore “no junk mail” signs on letter boxes and deliver the items anyway.
The government says that the environment is one of its priorities. However, aside from other considerations on environmental neglect, such as the way new or expanded roads are eating into the countryside, the volume of unregulated and untaxed junk mail is also a strong indication that successive administrations have not given too much attention to the issue.
Producers of junk mail are spending money to publish their fliers and to distribute them, but how about forcing them to pay some kind of levy for the trouble? We know that attempts have been made in the past for this – a budget initiative in 2009 to tax junk mail was scrapped after opposition from the stakeholders; while a public consultation exercise was also launched in 2016 on the need to reduce the amount of junk mail, but nothing much happened afterwards.
It is perhaps the time for the government to rekindle the idea. The situation cannot continue to escalate in the way it has done over the past years, with piles of unwanted material being pushed through letter boxes almost on a daily basis. And, until this happens, all of us must do that little bit of effort to dispose of this unwanted material in the proper way.