Managing waste

MaltaGirl studied the management of waste as an engineering student at university. Her diverse ramblings blog discusses the pros and cons of the new ecological tax introduced by the authorities in the context of Malta's waste management policies:

Anyway, I studied waste management last year as part of Environmental Engineering, and I was actually taught by the head of WasteServ, Dr. Chris Ciantar, who has a PhD in it. So I know quite a lot about the reasons/implications etc of waste management (it's actually quite interesting).

Of course as always, there's two sides to the issue: on the Government's side, they want people to cut down on waste. The main reason is that the Government is paying through the nose to process waste (specially plastic) so the fair thing is for the people who actually generate the waste to pay for its processing. That's the real reason for the eco-contribution (as usual it's the money). The secondary reason is to cut down on waste in the first place - this is the first principle of waste management. Less waste means less processing costs, less depletion of resources, and (yay) less environmental damage.

On the other side, the side of the manufacturer/retailer/consumer, no-one likes to have to pay more money for anything. Duh. The taxes have been set based on, it seems, how hard it is to process the waste.This leads to great discrepancies between items, but that's because organic/biodegradable waste is very easy to process, metal and similar items are harder, but plastic is the absolute worst. That's why the plastics have been hit very hard.

Eco Tax causes a stir in Malta by travel wire news