GreenPak hits out at Green MT for plans to charge local councils for recycled waste collection

Waste collection cooperative GreenPak has hit out at its competitor Green MT over plans to charge local councils additonal fees for the collection of recycled waste.

In a statement issued on Monday, GreenPak stressed that its waste collection service would continue to be free of charge for all of the 41 councils it services.

The cooperative’s reaction comes after an report in the Sunday Times of Malta which claimed that Green MT, a subsidiary of the Chamber of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (GRTU), had informed seven councils in Gozo and one in Malta that as of the 1 September its service would no longer be free. 

GreenPak CEO Mario Schembri said the company would continue to provide its services for free. 

“As a cooperative, we would like to stress that GreenPak will continue to provide the service to all its 41 local councils for free. The members of the cooperaa1e pay to provide this free service to the public through local councils and there are no compensations received from government,” he said. 

Schembri also insisted that according to Legal Notice 226 of 2017, the authorised packaging waste recovery scheme would finance the collection, treatment, recovery and disposal of packaging waste generated from households. 

The legal notice meant that every local council had to be provided with a free service since the scheme was financed by the business community.

The scheme according to GreenPak is based on the ‘producer pays principle’, and will be recovering 80 percent of the packaging put on the market by 2020.