Relevance
The NSO collects data about waste,
primarily in response to Regulation (EC) No. 2150/2002 of the European
Parliament as amended by Commission Regulation (EU) No. 849/2010 on waste
statistics (WStatR). This Regulation
stipulates that member states should report the following data:
- Waste generation by EWC-Stat waste
category and economic activity (including households);
- Waste treatment by EWC-Stat waste
category and waste treatment type; and
- Number and capacity/remaining capacity
of waste treatment facilities.
Methodological description
Data is collected from all legally
operating waste brokers and waste management facilities by the Environment
and Resources Authority (ERA), and WasteServ Malta Ltd.
Additional sources of data are used to compile statistics on
waste generation and treatment. Data on
the production of minerals from quarrying, as an indicator of waste which is
generated by the soft-stone industry, is available from the results of the ‘Questionnaire
on Minerals Production’ which is carried out by the NSO every two years.
Data on licensed motor vehicles, indicating waste generated
by vehicles during their lifetime is sourced from the quarterly ‘Motor Vehicles’
news release. Data on scrapped motor vehicles is sourced from the
‘out-of-action’ database of Transport Malta.
The figure of the per capita household waste generation for
organic and recyclable waste is derived from the ‘Household Waste Generation
Survey’ carried out by the NSO in order to determine the generation of mixed
waste from households. The most recent
survey was carried out for the reference year 2011/2012.
Accuracy and reliability of data
The NSO verifies the data submitted by ERA and WasteServ
Malta Ltd, for implausible combinations, year-on-year inconsistencies,
data gaps, and inconsistencies across facilities. Queries
are then sent to the data providers to update or verify the figures. Such checks
ensure that the overall quality of waste statistics is good.
Timeliness and punctuality of data
On a national level, two news releases related to waste
statistics are produced and disseminated on the NSO’s website as scheduled in
the Advance
Release Calendar, on a yearly basis.
These are the ‘Solid Waste Management’ and ‘Municipal Waste’ news
releases, disseminated in year t+2.
Every two years, for each reference year, WStatR data is
transmitted to Eurostat within 18 months following end of reference year. Municipal waste data is transmitted annually to
Eurostat within 11 months following end of reference year.
Accessibility and clarity of data
Waste statistics feature also in ad-hoc publications about environment
statistics and sustainable development indicators which are available on the
NSO’s website.
Quality reports of the WStatR and Municipal waste data
collections are compiled according to established template and sent to Eurostat
with every data delivery. A similar report is produced at a national
level and is available on the NSO’s metadata website.
Coherence and comparability / consistency of data
Countries that report data for the WStatR and Municipal
waste in general, use common definitions and classifications and so the
comparability between countries is fairly high. However problematic issues with the definition
for municipal waste are still unresolved leading to different coverage of waste
streams from one country to the next. Another
area of concern is the waste generation by economic activities as countries do
not use common approaches to produce these figures.
In general, data for waste generation from 2004
onwards is comparable. However, due to
the revision of the WStatR in 2010, some data is only comparable from 2010
onwards.
The waste treatment dataset is only comparable from
2010 onwards. Between 2004 and 2008,
data about waste treatment was collected in three different data sets covering
waste incineration, recovery, and disposal. Data had to be reported according to
aggregates of waste categories which were specific to each of these datasets. Moreover, the revision of the Regulation has
split up the waste treatment categories ‘Recovery’ into ‘ Recovery other than energy recovery -
Except backfilling’ and ‘Recovery other than energy recovery – Backfilling’, and ‘Incineration’ into ‘Incineration’ and ‘Energy
Recovery’.
For municipal waste data, the comparable time
series covers data from 2004 onwards. For the compulsory variables (municipal
waste generation, recycling, composting and digestion, incineration for
disposal, energy recovery, and coverage of the collection system) the
comparable time series goes back to 1999.
All published or reported waste statistics are
produced with the same source data. However,
the different methodological guidelines which are applied limit the
comparability of results across different reporting obligations and published
data.
Malta
does not use statistical units to link waste generation to economic units, and
so there is a lack of comparability with other statistical domains.
Metadata