Battle against rubbish varies greatly in central Majorca

Amongst the 14 or so municipalities which go to make up the Pla, weighing of waste material has been introduced to control how much residents are throwing away. Results show that there are vast differences from one municipality to the next. There are those where the non-recyclable rubbish mountain is more than 7 kilos per resident per week and at the other extreme, there are areas where each neighbour is on average not producing any more than 300 grammes of such material a week.

The situation, said the Council ofMajorca yesterday could be due to a number of different factors. One is that some towns and villages have opted to remove all free-standing rubbish containers from rural areas of the municipality but others have decided to leave them in place for use by residents living out of town. The latter situation, a spokesman said, would vastly increase the amount of non-recyclable waste having to be processed.

Those with particularly high waste mountains are the municipalities of Costitx, Sencelles, Lloret, Montuïri and Sant Joan. On average, residents in each of these areas produce four kilos per person per week.

At the other end of the scale, residents in María de la Salud generate on average just 0.3 kilos or waste per person per week.
The phenomenon, claimed the Council, is due to what has become known as “waste tourism” in which householders take their bags of waste to other municipalities where there is no recycling system in place. This way, residents who don't put their waste out for collection, can in theory avoid paying part of their rubbish tax. Weighing of waste which is non-recyclable and has to be incinerated is carried out every two months.