Fines on the way for households, commercial outlets that fail to separate waste correctly

Waste separation will become mandatory over the coming months with new laws introducing fines for non-compliance expected to be published next week, Miriam Dalli said.

Waste separation will be mandatory for households and commercial establishments.

The Environment Minister said the process will kick off with an educational campaign that will then be followed by enforcement of the new rules.

Speaking in parliament earlier this week, Dalli said raising awareness on the importance of waste separation was not enough and the country had to do much more to reduce mixed waste that ends up in landfills.

She said that up to two years ago from every 100kg of waste disposed of in the grey recyclable bags, 35kg was wrongly disposed waste.

A strong educational campaign carried out by Wasteserv brought this figure down to less than 20kg, she added.

“This enabled us to export more recyclable waste but 20kg out of every 100kg is still too high a number. Unfortunately, around 90% of our waste is still heading towards our landfills. These are numbers that I am not happy with,” Dalli said.

She said government was determined to improve the situation by bringing down the ratio of landfilled waste to 10%.

“We need a strong collective effort to reach this target,” she said.

Households are expected to separate waste in three streams: recyclable waste in grey bags; organic waste in white bags; and all other waste in black bags.

Wasteserv will be building an incinerator at the Għallis facility, dubbed Eco Hive, where 192,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste will be transformed into energy. This will significantly reduce the amount of waste that will be landfilled.

She said the excavation works for the new plant are ongoing and the tendering process for the construction and operation of the incinerator is underway.

At Għallis, Wasteserv will also be transforming 70,000 tonnes of organic waste into renewable energy and high quality compost for use in the agricultural sector.