16th May 2012

ESG, CUTW and the Litter Committee

Last week saw the revival of a Litter Committee for Gibraltar as announced by the Ministry for the Environment. A similar committee existed back in the early 1990’s.

Since 2005 and our involvement in the CUTW Campaign, the ESG has called for a resumption of this committee. The group strongly believes in the need for collaboration and coordination between all relevant agencies to effectively manage Gibraltar’s busy, physical environment and all the waste and littering issues that arise from our community. Coordination is essential to ensure clear areas of responsibility, monitoring and response, and we believe that accountability can then be better measured also. A round table, Litter Committee set up where such issues can be jointly discussed is therefore critical.

Enforcement of litter and fly tipping fines is a clear goal of ours which we think is way overdue and badly needed. We shall continue to place our concerns before the Committee and the Ministry which is the best place for progress on these issues and others to be achieved. We welcome the Minister’s decision for taking this forward.

More on CUTW 2012 goals:

• Litter Committee
• Eco Park and 24/7 facility
• Litter Wardens and enforcement and fines -ie prevention
• Enclosure at the city dump
• Increased Recycling qties and streams
• Assess gaps in maintaining Gibraltar’s environment as its clear that there is still work to be done here
• Use of signage and a sustained campaign also required
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The ESG recognises the hard work done by the many agencies to try and keep Gibraltar clean and believes that with enforcement and fines, their work can become easier as civic pride increases and less littering and dumping takes place.