The Malta Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise (MCCE), the Malta Federation of Industry (FOI), the Malta Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises (GRTU) and the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association (MHRA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the establishment of a waste management scheme on packaging and packaging waste.

The document was signed in the presence of the Minister for Rural Affairs and Environment, Hon. George Pullicino and the Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Hon. Tonio Fenech.

Through the creation of this scheme companies will ensure that their producers' obligations - namely those of recovering a specified amount of waste - will be met by this scheme. In the signed document, the four organisations agreed on the common principles to ensure that the obligations with respect to waste packaging collection and recycling are upheld by the business community at large in the interest of all. The four organisations are stressing the fact that once the scheme is established, it will operate on a not-for-profit and transparent basis and that any surplus of funding will be reinvested in the company to further reduce rates for the benefit of their members.

The Packaging and Packaging waste directive (94/62/EC, as amended by Directive 2004/12/EC), as transposed by LN 98 of 2004 and amended by LN 277/2006, implements the Extended Producer Responsibility Principle (EPR) for packaging waste. The Directive covers ALL types of packaging (i.e. primary, secondary and tertiary) whether it is used or released at industrial, commercial, office, shop, service, household or any other level, regardless of the material used. In the waste management sector, the EPR is implemented by the producer taking full responsibility for the product placed on the market. This responsibility extends to the whole lifecycle of a product, i.e. even after the product has served its useful purpose and has become waste.

Legal Notice 277 of 2006 applies to all packaging put on the market in Malta and all packaging waste, whether it is used or released at industrial, commercial, office, shop, service, household or any other level, regardless of the material used, unless such packaging is expressly excluded from the application of these regulations.

Producers are also obliged under the Packaging and Packaging Waste regulations to register the amounts of packaging put on the Maltese market with the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.