A GRTU environmental committee has drawn up a comprehensive waste management scheme to assume all the responsibilities facing Maltese traders because of the law and European directives. The GRTU said the committee had carried out the necessary analysis, research and consultations so that it is now in a position to present the government with an application to operate such a scheme. This would assume the management of packaging for mineral drinks, beer and other beverages in glass, plastic and metal containers, of packaging of cardboard and similar material and of electronic and electrical waste.

Its analysis, the GRTU said, showed that it made more sense for the trader himself to manage these schemes rather than

letting private commercial interests handle them. The prices and charges being imposed under existing schemes were exorbitant and in many cases it would be the consumer who would pay for this inflated expenditure.

The GRTU said the schemes it was proposing were better than those proposed by others. Traders had to make sure that the obligations they had under the law, for which they were paying for them to be assumed in their name, were truly carried out as required by law, or they would still be faced with obligations. The GRTU schemes carried this assurance and did so at a much cheaper price than being offered by others. Traders would themselves be operating the schemes, under the GRTU’s supervision.

The GRTU advised traders not to join any scheme in which they had no say, whose price was not affordable and which did not give the necessary guarantees.