Government lacks a waste management plan

The Labour Party has been lacking a waste management plan since it took over the leadership of our country. Its legacy in this area is only two massive fires, one in Magħtab and another in Sant’Antnin, which Government is now using as an excuse to dismantle and close this latter plant.

The repairs needed at the Sant’Antnin plant following the wildfires have been a good excuse to fulfill Joseph Muscat’s electoral promise to close the plant before the next election.

On the other hand, the fire that engulfed Magħtab, did not only expose the incompetence of the government and Wasteserv, but is now exposing more deception as the Government appropriates more arable land in Magħtab with the scope of building a new complex in this area.

The Nationalist Party is not against incineration as long as this is used as the last step and only the last step when the Reduce, Reuse and Recycle processes have failed to process a piece of garbage.

The Nationalist Party left a clear plan in place that was a roadmap for the country to embrace the 3Rs while moving away from landfilling. The whole concept behind the Sant’Antnin plant was that this would also gradually be expanded in parallel with the rehabilitation of Magħtab and with new facilities being built at Magħtab. The plan was to have both these facilities linked by underground tunnels so that the transfer of waste between one site and another would not cause inconvenience to residents and increased heavy vehicle traffic. Sant’Antnin was also linked by an underground tunnel to the Dellimara power plant site with the scope of building a Waste to Energy plant there, because we already have a proper power distribution network there.

The current Government’s waste management strategy does not reflect these plans.

The country does not need drastic directional changes every time an the administration of our country changes political leaning. A holistic and national plan must be discussed with all stakeholders. The fact that Government set up a committee of experts to focus only on the incinerator and then hid behind this committee’s decision to justify its intentions is simply political immaturity. Such a drastic decision to transform Magħtab into Malta’s only garbage processing plant should be the subject of a proper public and open discussion with a complete SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) process in accordance with EU directives. An Environmental Impact Assessment is the step that comes AFTER a site is properly chosen at the end of the SEA process.

Government is failing miserably when it comes to waste separation. Instead of collecting clean organic waste from commercial kitchens (hotels, restaurants, hospitals, factories, etc), the Government tuned to residential organic waste – which is always tainted and contaminated by waste which is placed in the wrong bags - and then proceeded to claim that this organic waste has to be mixed because the quality is not good enough.

Putting carts before horses is never a good idea.

The choice of Magħtab as the site for the planned Waste to Energy plant is clearly a decision that was taken by a Government that then proceeded to go through the motions of justifying this decision. So much so that the consultant hired by government to assist in their planning for this Waste to Energy plant had only Magħtab as a location to consider. Given this Hobson’s choice, what else could the experts have said? Magħtab may be a suitable site for this plant, but is it the MOST suitable? The Government does not seem to want us to find out.

Government is failing miserably when it comes to waste separation. Instead of collecting clean organic waste from commercial kitchens (hotels, restaurants, hospitals, factories, etc), the Government tuned to residential organic waste – which is always tainted and contaminated by waste which is placed in the wrong bags – and then proceeded to claim that this organic waste has to be mixed because the quality is not good enough.

Government should clarify and explain if the Waste to Energy plant will be used exclusively for Refuse Derived Fuels or whether it will become the main method of dealing with our waste. The fact that this is the first plant that Government has decided to build gives the impression that the will to recycle is not nearly as strong as the desire to burn waste because this is a quick fix. Keep in mind that a Waste to Energy plant is fuel hungry and the hotter it burns, the more viable it becomes. It might just turn into a great incentive to feed this plant as opposed to the more cumbersome but ever so more environmentally friendly recycling process.

Magħtab should not become our country’s only rubbish bin. The Opposition strongly objects to the intention that those facilities that are now licensed, operational and have been modernized with EU funds be closed for political expediency. The Sant’Antnin plant should continue to operate in order to reduce the number of refuse trucks going up and down from the south of Malta to Magħtab and back. The position taken by the Government to simply carry out some electoral promise made by the OCCRP 2019 Person of the Year in Organized Crime and Corruption to close Sant’Antnin will result in more traffic, more pollution and will also be extremely unfair to all the residents of Naxxar, Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq, Madliena, Magħtab, Qawra, Buġibba, Burmarrad and St. Paul’s Bay just to name a few.

The Nationalist Party believes that the national waste management plan should be based on the following principles.

Firstly, an intensive national campaign to recover clean organic waste from commercial entities before residential ones. It makes little sense for Government to focus on collecting small volumes of contaminated organic waste from homes while allowing large volumes of higher quality organic waste generated by hotels and restaurants, to be thrown away.

Secondly, any incinerator must be designed to treat Refuse Derived Fuels and nothing more. We do not want to see a situation develop when incineration becomes the order of the day and makes up for a lack of planning or proper negotiated agreements to dispose of recycled materials. Our current issues with the proper collection and disposal of used vehicle rubber tyres is a very good example of this.

Thirdly, a wide range of facilities should be spread around our country and not all located in one area. Rather than close Sant’Antnin, we should be discussing how the burden may be shared more equitably around the island. This ensures that the environmental burden is shared and that if one facility has an emergency, there are other facilities that meet the needs of the country.

Furthermore, we should be careful about using the DBO concept on essential services. Our experience with the Electrogas deal has shown that corruption is rife within this government, and therefore, any long-term operational deals might burden the country and its citizens with high running costs. These costs would then inevitably be passed on to the local councils and our taxes. A Nationalist government remains committed to alleviating the financial burdens of our citizens and not creating hidden taxes so that investors in these plants make excessive profits.

Fourthly, facilities for industrial waste, which have been used by this government to win back space for municipal waste (such as, for example, the hazardous waste facility), will be rebuilt. Today, only God knows where toxic material that the Maltese industry generates ends up when reception and treatment facilities have been taken up.

Humid waste, such as sludge, which is being generated by sewage treatment, should not be sent to Magħtab and should not be burnt as it consumes a lot of energy. The government’s plan for dealing with this waste is as best patchy and appears unsustainable.

The Nationalist Party believes in, and has put into place, steps to move towards a circular economy. We will support all efforts to follow this lead provided that the rights of our citizens are not trampled upon to appease political undertakings.

Finally, the choice of technology and location for any plant should be a transparent one, and not one that is taken unilaterally or after some semblance of consultation. We will continue to insist that this Government stops giving lip-service to Europe directives and values and empowers our citizens. They have a right to be part of these crucial choices that our country makes.