Waste Serve Malta Ltd. has made reference to the consultation proposals made by the Building Industry Consultative Council (BICC). WasteServ welcomes and fully upholds BICC’s view that the creation of a financially sound market for the re-use of excavated material should be the answer to a sustainable waste management solution for the Maltese Islands. This should, however, be free of any form of subsidies and should not necessarily apply to Construction and Demolition waste only but to any waste stream which may be potentially re-used.

In line with the spirit of the revised Solid Waste Management Strategy, WasteServ believes that it should not be the principal player in developing commercially feasible initiatives such as those suggested. WasteServ takes this opportunity to reiterate that it has no intention of competing with the private sector. First and foremost, WasteServ’s ultimate responsibility is to dedicate its finite resources, both human and financial, for the provision of essential services related to waste management. Secondly, it sees this area as having a great potential for the private sector to explore and develop. Thus, WasteServ fully agrees with BICC that the private sector should be encouraged to identify innovative means of making use of this material and take this forward, a task which was outlined in the 2001 Strategy.

As an example of this, the construction industry should seriously explore the feasibility of extracting limestone blocks for re-use in subsequent building activities of medium to large scale projects. At first glance this may appear as a complex and costly operation in the short term, but one needs to consider in the equation the cost-savings resulting from the procurement of such building blocks as well as disposal fees of inert waste.

It should be noted that the management of inert waste in Gozo was privatised in 2003. When this service was abandoned by the private sector in 2007, WasteServ was called in to provide a public service, which service is still being provided. The services of the management of inert waste in Gozo and Malta are both carried out by the private sector but as a public service procured by WasteServ on behalf of Government.

In conclusion, WasteServ would like to point out that at present the export of local stone is not permissible under the current legislative regime. To this effect, WasteServ believes that a revision to this law might be highly beneficial to make such projects economically feasible.

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