Malta’s Beverage Container Refund Scheme is practically a month old.

A scheme which was long-promised, long-awaited, and plagued by delays has finally come to fruition, and has already had an impact, with over 4.5 million cans and bottles disposed and recycled through the system so far.

Like with many changes of significance, there has been a share of people who have complained – largely on social media – about the system, calling it everything from a new indirect tax to a nuisance to a greenwashing exercise.

Evidence has shown that it is none of the above, and rather is quite a necessity if Malta is to improve its recycling rates.

Arguments that the system is effectively an indirect tax especially do not ring true: yes, the price of anything including a beverage container has increased by 10c – but it’s only an expense if the purchaser then chooses not to recycle the container, which, quite frankly, is their own fault.

Yes, machines have sometimes been full, but every new system is going to face teething problems in the first weeks of its operation, but like the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association was optimistic that the “10%” where problems still remain can be solved, the public should give some time and optimism for these matters to be ironed out.

Even the operation of the scheme appears to have been done correctly – a rare enough thing considering the track record for things coming out of the Labour Party’s electoral manifesto.

The scheme is operated by the Malta Beverage Importers Association, the Malta Beverage Producers Association, and the Malta Beverage Retailers Association, with Charles Grech & Co Limited, The General Soft Drinks Company Limited, Simonds Farsons Cisk and GSD Marketing Limited then all holding a very small shareholding each.

It is good to see that all the major stakeholders in the industry have been brought together, rather than a scheme being authored in such a manner for one to benefit over the other.

This is especially the case considering the fact the scheme had its own hazy origins: disgraced former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri’s Kasco Group had in 2014 joined up with now alleged Daphne Caruana Galizia murder mastermind Yorgen Fenech to lay out plans for a similar scheme – long before Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had even announced the government’s desire to move in this direction.

Recycling was in fact listed in a leaked 2015 Mossack Fonseca email as one of the sectors which Schembri and former minister Konrad Mizzi wanted to use their Panama companies for. 

However, these plans fizzled out and today’s version of the scheme appears to veer away from any sort of operational fishiness which has come to characterise some other landmark schemes.

The fact of the matter remains that this scheme is a necessity if Malta wants to improve on its recycling credentials.  Eurostat figures recently showed that Malta has the lowest rate of recycling for plastic packaging in the European Union, and it will only take measures such as these to improve that.

The 4.5 million – and counting – containers collected so far seem to indicate that, at least, we are heading in the right direction.