|
Nature Trust, the environmental NGO, welcomes the introduction of the concept of eco taxes in Malta but expects improvement on the details after the promised consultation.
The present tax will be charged at flat rates on containers ranging from plastic and glass bottles and cans for beer, wine and non-alcoholic drinks, to white goods and electronic products including telephones, as well as batteries.
Eco taxes are meant to push the general public to opt for environmentally friendly products and to consume less, and to push manufacturers to initiate measures to use less material and collect used material for reuse and/or recycling. Eco taxes are also a means of putting the polluter pays principle in practice
While NTM fully supports eco taxes so long as these are applied discriminately to ensure that whoever uses harmful products excessively or instead of other more eco-friendly substitutes pays for their end of life, it feels that a nation wide campaign should be launched in order to educate the public on the harm such products make and show the alternatives that can be used. On the other hand it notes that government introduced incentives for those businesses, which organise bring-in facilities and promote eco-friendly products.
It is inconceivable how differential tariffs for environmentally friendly, environmentally less friendly and environmentally harmful products are not evident all throughout the proposals. The NGO laments that no education campaign is planned to explain the environmental reasons behind eco taxes and how citizens can use eco taxes as a tool to improve their lifestyle in environmental terms. One such example is that plastics are very harmful to human health when they end up in our landfills and thus whoever uses them should pay the eco-tax. On the other hand PET plastic, which is environmentally less harmful, as it is potentially recyclable, should be taxed at a lower rate than PVC plastic, which cannot be recycled.
Nature Trust welcomes the recent decision of government to undergo consultation with environmental NGOs on the eco taxes in line with the Aarhus Convention and according to contemporary belief in participatory democracy.
The NGO argues that eventually the revenue collected should go into a transparently managed environmental fund. The revenue collected should go into environmental projects, for example introducing the ‘Reduce, Reuse and Recycle’ principle in everyday life or improving our degraded environment by funding a Green Warden system. Only in this way such tax collection would be transparent and the public would see the results of the polluter pays principle in action.
Further information at Nature Trust (Malta) PO Box 9, Valletta CMR 01; email:
info@naturetrustmalta.org;
tel./fax. 356 21 313150
|
