Malta is perhaps on the more unique side when it comes to how its households dispose of waste.  With no centralised communal bins, or individual disposal bins, waste is dumped on the pavement for collection every day.

There are architectural reasons for this: many of Malta’s narrow winding roads with one-person wide pavements simply do not offer the space for each house to have a bin.

The consequence, however, is that we do get quite a few instances, especially now in tourist season, where garbage is left to rot on pavements in the blistering summer heat awaiting pick up. It is an unseemly sight until it is picked up.

There has already been an enormous culture change in that people now separate their waste between organic, recyclable, and general waste which each have particular days when they can be put out for collection.

However it’s not been across the board: there are problems with both tourists and residents alike who continue to put out bags on the wrong days, meaning that they are left uncollected for a prolonged period of time.

This is especially the case for touristic hotspots which are now filled with short-let apartments, where the crop of tourists generally attracted to the country as of late care little about the nuances of when the black bag should and shouldn’t be put out.

This topic was brought up with the CEO of the Malta Tourism Authority Carlo Micallef, as was asked about implementing more frequent waste collection, especially in areas such as Swieqi and Sliema where garbage often stacks up along pavements during peak summer periods.

He said that "one has to look into the way garbage is collected," and that while boosting collection frequency could serve as a partial solution, "the real solution is for people to observe the law."

The MTA CEO said that more frequent collection may work and that enforcing against people leaving out their bags of waste at wrong times is a mighty challenge in itself. On the latter, Micallef said that the MTA tried installing face-recognition cameras for this purpose, though this was not allowed due to an impediment in the law. He added that the MTA would "love to assist local councils in catching these people who bring out their garbage at irregular times or when they shouldn't."

He said that Malta's waste collection system of leaving garbage bags out by the street for garbage trucks to collect is not a sight for sore eyes, though "that's the system we have." He shared having the same thoughts after seeing such garbage bags out in London.

"The way that that our garbage collection works, it doesn't look good," Micallef said.

Discussing the possibility of an alternative waste collection system, Micallef stated that installing underground bins in Malta can be done for new developments, "but it's not easy to do it in city centres, village centres, where it has been built up after many years now."

Micallef’s line of thinking in this regard does reflect reality, particularly when it comes to the challenges of enforcement on this topic and of introducing alternative systems.

The government has toyed with the idea of looking into underground waste bins, with this having initially been a Nationalist Party proposal, and while this would work very well in some areas, it would also be difficult in others purely due to the layout and characteristics of, for instance, Urban Conservation Areas.

Increasing collection times can also help, and it is also time to look at whether the collection times of certain localities makes sense – for instance, does it make sense for waste to be collected between 4 and 6pm in some places?  Residents will have likely thrown their rubbish out in the morning before going to work anyway – meaning that the pavements are littered (literally) with bags for the better part of the day.

As far as enforcement goes, it is difficult to have officials roaming the streets to check which house has put out which garbage bag – but it could make sense that at least for short-lets, an added level of responsibility is placed on the owners who are renting the property.

There must be a degree of responsibility in the sense that they must advise their holidaymaker tenants on how things should be done – and the consequence must fall onto them first, as the owner responsible for the place, in the case of regulations not being followed.