Malta's environment minister, Francis
Zammit Dimech, has indicated that the Malta government will lobby
to retain its law on the bottling of soft drinks when it negotiates
to join the EU in the coming months. Although not referring directly
to the negotiations, the Minister emphasised the importance of
retaining the law.
While much of Malta's environmental law
lags far behind EU standards and will have to be upgraded, Malta's
environment has benefited from a regulation originally passed
in 1961 which stated that all soft drinks should be bottled in
glass with a mandatory deposit on the container. Carbonated drinks
such as Coke, Pepsi, etc cannot be bottled in aluminium or plastic
in the Maltese islands and about 80 million glass bottles are
sold annually.
The hot climate makes the Maltese one
of the highest per capita consumers of soft drinks and the Maltese
have a good record for returning their bottles. Most bottles
are returned and reused around 30 times and some have been known
to remain in circulation for up to 10 years.
While the EU is a free trade zone and
it may be argued that to regulate what the type of packaging
is acceptable would go against free trade, the Malta government
believes the island's circumstances warrant special treatment.
The Danish Case
Denmark tried to protect its environment
in the now famous "Danish bottlers court case." Denmark
kept its obligation for beer and soft drinks to be distributed
in refillable bottles. The EU Commission claimed Danish law to
be an infringement of EU regulations on free trade, however,
the European Court of Justice decided in favour of the Danish
government on the basis that its specific environment law took
precedence over the more general EU Article 30 pertaining to
the free market. The Court concluded that the protection of the
environment is one of the EU's so-called 'mandatory requirements'.
However things have changed dramatically in the past few weeks.
This Court's decision is likely to be
overturned as Denmark's law has been found to infringe the EU's
1994 packaging directive and the bloc's treaty article 28 guaranteeing
free movement of goods, court advisor Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer concluded
recently.
While it now appears more than likely
that Denmark will lose its case, the Danish government has taken
steps to protect its environment. The Danes have re-designed
their packaging tax in such a way that it probably overcomes
the judge's objections, whilst at the same time implicitly banning
(or penalising quite heavily) the use of one-trip metal packaging.
The environmental considerations
This is one possible way out for Malta.
Francis Zammit Dimech and the rest of the Maltese Cabinet could
consider a law to heavily penalise one-way packaging and make
in unprofitable. This kind of law would be acceptable to the
EU as it would be a measure taken for all types of beverage packaging
and would have the clear intention of protecting the environment.
Should Malta lose its environmentally
friendly law, it will not only be exacerbating its already perilous
waste situation, but the bottlers of the 80 million soft drinks
have indicated that should soft drinks be imported, in what would
probably be plastic containers, the several hundred workers working
on the production line would find themselves without a job.
In the past few months the Malta government
engaged consultants to prepare a waste management strategy for
the Maltese Islands. The strategy was presented to the government,
which, in turn, decided to review it before adopting it. The
strategy was adopted in September of 2001 and will be a great
improvement on the present set up.
Environment Minister Francis Zammit Dimech had called for an
environmentally friendly strategy, and retaining soft drinks
in glass bottles would help in no small way.
Not long ago the great majority of Maltese
people drank water from taps. More recently, poor water quality
and the desire for a better product (due to better living standards
and expectations) caused the majority of Maltese to turn to bottled
water, which was mostly packaged in Polyvinyl chloride (PVC),
but recently this is being replaced by one way PET (Polyethylene
Terphthalate).
Nearly all shops and supermarkets give free plastic bags to consumers
and these have replaced the traditional wicker, or cloth, baskets
previously used. Our litter-bins, previously lined with newspapers
have been replaced with plastic bags. The quantities of fruit
juices sold have rocketed and most of these are sold in tetrapacks,
which contain an element of plastic.
Supermarket goods are increasingly being packaged, or bottled
in plastic; these include : detergents, margarine, fresh fruit
and vegetables, eggs, cheese, 'health foods', cosmetics and yoghurt
among others. More and more fast-food outlets sell food in expanded
polystyrene (jablo) packaging and soft-drinks in either polystyrene
or plastic cups. All this has meant an increased toxicity in
our waste which is exacerbated by the fact that Malta has no
properly managed landfill and all waste is collected together
and put in an open dump in the vicinity of the sea and tourism
developments.
If Malta were to change its bottling
regime for soft drinks, or should the EU try to open up the market
to all possible types of packaging, it is likely that Maltese
industry would go for single way PET bottles. While it could
be argued, by both consumers and environmentalists, that returnable
PET bottles would be preferable to refillable glass, one-way
PET is likely to be the distributors preferred option as this
would remove the necessity of collecting and washing the bottles.
In a free trade situation, one-way PET would make the most commercial
sense and has been the preferred option in other EU countries.
The Malta situation is perhaps unique
in Europe, and possibly in the world. Malta is an island state
with a relatively small population (about 386,000), a high population
density, limited land area and a limited availability of natural
resources. Most of the goods and raw materials consumed in Malta
are imported. Furthermore, Malta is relatively distant from major
waste treatment centres in Europe and is dependent on tourism
as a major source of foreign currency.
The net result is that Malta :
· Generates a substantial amount
of waste when compared to its small land mass;
· Does not have the industrial
and consumer base to make waste recycling an economically feasible
scenario;
· Does not benefit from the availability
of large waste treatment centres for the treatment of its waste
(unlike Luxembourg which exports waste for recycling to neighbouring
countries Germany, France and Belgium).
· It is more realistic to assume
that Malta would have to treat most of its own waste in the near
and distant future;
· Malta's economy is highly sensitive
to the income from tourism which is in turn responsive to a general
well-being of the state of the environment on the Islands
An ECO Balance Study
An ECO balance study on the impact of
introducing alternative packaging for soft drinks in Malta has
been carried out as part of the study on the environmental impact
of Malta joining the EU. That study concluded that retaining
the present packaging regime would be most beneficial to Malta.
The study shows that, for Malta, refillable
glass is the best option. The main conclusions are that should
Malta retain refillable glass bottles: less waste will go to
landfill; the effluent from cleaning the bottles has a negligible
impact on the environment; less trips will be required for waste
collection vehicles; glass bottles tend to result in less litter
than PET ones.
The study indicates that:
- based on 1999 data collected from the
bottlers, the introduction of PET would result in some 86 million
containers entering the waste management stream; of these about
51.62 million would be 1 litre bottles weighing 40 grams each
and another 34.62 million 0.5 litre bottles weighing 30 grams
each;
- the total PET waste generated would
be just less than 3,100 tonnes increasing to 4,100 by 2,010.
This waste would probably have to go to a landfill as volumes
are not considered to be sufficient for recycling or commercially
viable for exporting;
- the waste generated would take up to
35,400 cubic metres of landfill space by 2010 even if 15% of
the waste is recycled in compliance with the EU's Packaging and
Packaging Waste Directive. This would represent anything between
25 to 33% of the capacity of any new landfill that is expected
to be created in Malta in the coming years;
- a Life Cycle Analysis showed, without
a shadow of doubt, that refillable glass is preferable to PET;
the analysis actually showed that refillable glass was in many
instances significantly better than PET when studying the environmental
'fingerprinting' of the bottles and processes including the energy
and raw material consumption, emissions to air, land and sea,
other environmental impacts as well as the different environmental
cost and benefit scenarios including studies involving the changing
of waste collection methods, distance to transfer stations and
methods of treatment or disposal;
- one-way PET containers would result
in a 15-fold increase in the number of waste collection vehicle
trips needed meaning increased traffic congestion on what are
already highly congested roads;
- the potential for litter would also
increase considerably with the introduction of PET bottles; the
light weight PET is much more likely to find its way to the sea
than glass, with considerable detrimental effects on marine life.
The report concludes that, on environmental
grounds, there is a very clear case for Malta retaining its packaging
regime for soft drinks.
Whether Malta will succeed to keep its
law on joining the EU is an entirely different matter and, given
the recent developments in the Danish bottles case, the likelihood
of this happening is slight. The best option would be for Malta
to introduce a law to favour refillable packaging for beverages
before it becomes a EU member.
Malta's Waste Management Strategy
There have been some significant developments
in the plans for Malta's waste in the past few months. While
the waste management strategy prepared by the Ministry for the
Environment excluded incineration as an option for Malta, at
least for the period 2002 to 2009, the subsequent waste management
plan prepared by EU approved consultants Carl Bro suggested that
an incinerator is essential for Malta's waste management plans.
The consultants argued that, in order to meet the targets of
the Landfill Directive, Malta would have to have an incinerator
by 2013.
This conclusion was hotly disputed and
Friends of the Earth (Malta) has shown that some critical figures
used by the consultants are incorrect. Several towns in Italy
and other parts of Europe are confidently looking to meet the
EU Landfill Directive without resorting to incineration. The
biological treatment of biodegradable waste, which produces a
sort of low quality compost (rather like what Malta is producing
at Sant'Antnin), may be part of the solution. Friends of the
Earth (Malta) is convinced that with the right determination,
the targets of the Landfill Directive can be met without incineration
and biological treatment can be resorted to should separate waste
collection targets not be reached.
The Malta government has now adopted
its waste management strategy and incineration has been excluded
as an option, at least for the next ten years. This decision
adds weight to the argument for retaining refillable bottles
as there will be no incinerator to deal with the millions of
bottles that will appear in our waste streams if one-way packaging
for soft drinks is allowed.
Even if it may not seem often the case,
the Environment Minister's duty is to strive for an improved
environment. Allowing PET one-way packaging instead of refillable
glass will prove to be a big administrative headache for the
authorities and will also be costly in terms of collection, recycling,
incineration and landfilling.
Keeping a healthy environment for the
Maltese has never been a high priority of Maltese administrations,
but public pressure, aided by an ever more vigilant media, is
mounting on our current minister. As with other environmental
problems, the solution will depend heavily on political will.
It is unlikely that the Maltese people, given their socio-political
history, will come together and demand environment friendly packaging.
If Malta is to keep its law to protect the environment the Maltese
government will have to present a water-tight case to Brussels
so as to convince the EU that the impacts of changing our present
bottling law would be much more disastrous than any benefits
that can be gained from the protection of free trade.
Bibliography
'A Waste Management Strategy For the
Maltese Islands' Ministry for the Environment (Sept 2001).
'Development of an Integrated Solid Waste
Management Strategy for the Maltese Islands,' Carl Bro (May 2001)
'An Eco-Balance Study to investigate
the environmental impact of introducing alternative packaging
for soft drinks,' SLR Group and AIS Environmental Limited (May
2000)
'A Solid Waste Management Plan for Malta'
Consultation Document, Ministry for the Environment (Jan 2000)
State of the Environment Report, Environment
Protection Department, (1998)
'Packaging Report for Malta' Moviment
Ghall-Ambjent, Friends of the Earth (Malta) (July 1994)
