Thank God it's Sunday Garbage if not rubbish By Joe Brincat The Sunday Times of Malta | January 16, 2005 http://timesofmalta.com/core/article.php?id=175106 Last week I wrote about a legal notice which had already been destined for the garbage bin before the article was published. What is strange in this sort of legislation is that the minister who signed the legislative act, declares that it will not be applicable and will be substituted. If the law is wrong, it should be revoked in the first place. Instead, we have a situation where even the minister who took the responsibility of legislation disagrees with that law and declares it should be revoked. This is Limbo law. Once we used to hear so much about Limbo Rock. Now we have Limbo law. >From a purely na�ve perspective, can I ask whether anyone can be held to be in breach of a law which its promoter considers abandoned? If it has the formality of law, can you dispose of it through a press conference? If nothing, this is legal garbage. I visited the Website of WasteServ only to find that it still has on its files Legal Notice 529 of 2004, which introduced the new eco-tax on garbage bags and plastic bags. Legally they are correct. The latter has not been legally disposed of as garbage, even though the minister states that in the new parts it is garbage. There is a hidden danger. Operators in the sector may one fine day find that they relied on the minister's word in a press conference, and believed that the law was no longer operative. Later events may tell them that they were wrong, the minister did not put pen to paper, the paper was not published in the Government Gazette, and as long as there were no formalities according to law they had to abide by that law. Press conferences do not legislate, nor do they revoke or amend legislation. It is a political tool to ward off criticism. Another problem I ave seen an e-mail sent from an official source answering the question whether the same eco-tax would be applicable to goods which are imported. Let me take an example of containers for food. If there are clamshell containers, these have a tax (5c, according to the still valid legal notice). If these are imported to be filled with assorted nuts, then the box is considered as being detrimental to the environment and consequently will be taxed 5c. If the box comes already filled with nuts, assorted and without anything added, then there seems to be no tax. The official reply, silly enough, stated that it is not envisaged that food products would come over from another country dressed up in a "clamshell" box. What if they come? No tax is the answer. Then there is a further difficulty. The law has introduced the concept of "clamshell" which no one can really define. The law says that these boxes are commonly known as "clamshell". I have racked my brain, destroyed every thesaurus to find what is "commonly known as clamshells". The only answers that I had was that the clamshells are biodegradable, and sometimes they are too hard to destroy and form solid rock on the seabed. Now we are in Limbo. We do not know whether we shall have in the new Legal Notice, clams or lobster. Count me out, I am vegetarian. Garbage at Marsascala The minister took me to task in a recent debate of Smash TV when I said that all the garbage is going to be transferred to Marsascala for treatment. I was acting on the information I, and others, was given at the MEPA meeting when the project was on the agenda. Certainly I am no fool to say that solid construction waste stinks or that it putrefies in the heat of summer. Definitely the greater part of our garbage is made up of construction waste, which is being disposed of directly by dumping into disused quarries, which are not bottomless holes. But what about the rest? I would like to have official figures on how much garbage will be travelling through the whole of Malta to be "treated" at Marsascala. Even WasteServ does not seem to have the exact information. On its Website, to which I did not contribute, it admits that it has estimates, as there are few if any weighbridges installed. The only thing it asserts with certainty is that the garbage collected is on the increase. Is Marsascala going to serve our purposes? Are we going to generate energy from garbage? Are we going to separate waste there which should actually be separated at source? Is the garbage that will eventually travel to Marsascala rat-free? Are we really thinking about generating energy from garbage? Are we sure that Malta as a whole will not start stinking, only to be relieved with the thought that Marsascala fares far worse? ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Has someone you know been affected by illness or disease? 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