A new glass sorting line that will be recovering the equivalent of around 45 million glass bottles every year has been set up at WasteServ’s facility in Marsascala.
This was announced by Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Planning Aaron Farrugia who said that this new sorting line will further improve Malta’s recycling performance and help it reach its recycling targets.
Minister Farrugia said that the majority of the equipment used for this new sorting line had been originally earmarked for decommissioning. However, the skilled Maintenance Team within WasteServ managed to successfully turn this equipment into a new sorting line.
Besides resulting in a better-quality material, this new sorting line will also improve operational efficiency. The process formerly used involved manually sorting through the glass using a grabber tool, however, with this new set up, glass will be transferred onto a conveyor belt and will then be manually sorted by removing any contaminants such as metal lids and caps. This new sorting line gives the flexibility to also separate clear from coloured glass thereby increasing substantially the reuse potential and value of the recycled products.
During his visit, Minister Farrugia was accompanied by WasteServ CEO Richard Bilocca, who stated that this investment was possible following last year’s campaign for WasteServ to receive clean glass. In fact, 99% of the delivered material with the glass collection is now clean packaging glass.
Mr Bilocca said that a large-scale campaign related to the grey/green bag will be launched soon.
