The Maltese and German Environment Ministries have just concluded a twinning agreement on extended producer responsibility involving EU funding of e400,000, which Sigmar Gabriel, German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, deemed “very successful”.
Speaking at a media conference yesterday, Rural Affairs and the Environment Minister George Pullicino said representatives from the Malta Environment and Planning Authority and WasteServ Malta were given the opportunity to discuss issues central to Malta’s environment with a German delegation led by Mr Gabriel.
The aim of the twinning agreement, which ran between February 2006 and this month, was to find sustainable
solutions to the environmental challenges being faced today.
Mr Pullicino said that among the issues discussed with Mr Gabriel and the German delegation was the problem regarding waste management and the “strong need for the production of water”.
He said that, thanks to the help from German experts, the ministry, together with WasteServ and Mepa, would be carrying out a joint research project on the production of water through energy generated from waste.
The project, which has been labelled Waste to Water, will require a feasibility study before plans for it can be started, but Mr Pullicino said the idea was to produce energy from waste. This energy would then be transferred to the national grid for direct use in reverse osmosis plants, for example.
Mr Gabriel said it was very interesting to come to Malta and understand the particular situation on an island with a very limited area and large population, since the situation regarding a number of environmental issues, particularly those regarding waste management and water production, may vary in a rather drastic way to the situation faced by other governments in other parts of Europe.
He said that it was important to find solutions for the benefit of Europe in general, and to reach EU targets regarding climate change in particular.
Helmut Schnurer, the twinning agreement’s medium term advisor, explained that the project involved the implementation of EU regulations on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), study visits to Germany for Maltese employees, training on different areas of waste management by German short-term advisors in Malta and the development of the information concept.
“We tackled issues regarding the packing of waste, end of life vehicles and tyres, waste of electric and electronic equipment and waste oils, batteries and accumulators, as well as certain industrial waste,” he said.
Legal notices for the enactment of these EU directives in Malta have been issued and German experts have spent more than 200 working days in Malta for the purposes of EPR implementation, said Dr Schnurer.
Among the other achievements of the twinning team was the coordination of the first Waste Management Plan for the Maltese islands, he said.