Environment Minister launches new glass recycling initiative

Earlier this morning the Minister for Sustainable Development, Environment and Climate Chage, Leo Brincat, as well as Parliamentary Secretary for local government Stefan Buontempo, attended the launch of the Green MT initiative for door to door glass collection from 17 local councils in Malta. The company has formed an agreement wuth these local councils with regard to recyclable garbage collection. Minister Leo Brincat said that this new initiative is one more step in favour of the environment.

“While I hope that the next step will be to take glass recycling to the next step on a national level, the lesson to be learned from the experiments done in the glass recycling sector, is that the public should be constantly informed about when such collection would take place,” said Brincat.

“This can be done through the various means of communication used by Local Councils themselves; ideally even through text messages and social media. Although providing the public with a calendar of such events would be useful, this could lead to a less effective response from the public.”

 Brincat added that the need to be more committed and to improve the quality of this service is confirmed by figures which show that between 2012 and 2013, the strongest sources of glass collection were Bring In Sites.

 “As such, we need to increase our efforts. I strongly hope that these efforts will have the desired results.”

Buontempo said: “We can never work towards sustainable development if we don’t begin our projects on a local basis. Local Councils should be at the centre of the government’s effort to improve recycling levels. We are ensuring that local councils are given the necessary aid to achieve a healthier environment”

“The importance of glass recycling should always be given more importance as this natural resource is a 100% recyclable, and the demand for this resource is also very high. It is important to continue to promote initiatives such as this one, as they continue to strengthen residents’ sense of duty to participate more actively in recycling initiatives,” he said.