Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/736806
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 9 OCTOBER 2016 17 News Birkirkara local council said. Similarly, Attard councillor Ralph Cassar said: "Our biggest concern was that these unwanted clothes didn't end up in landfills. So when I discovered the initiative, I got in contact and signed up." Attard mayor Stefan Cordina highlighted the fact that the service was aimed at waste management and that as a local council, their plight was to reduce the amount of material being thrown away. "Notices sent to residents never called for 'donations' of clothes and we never said it was 'charity'," he said. "It is our duty to promote the reduction, re-use and recycling of waste so we decided to offer this additional collection service." "The council makes sure that waste handlers possess the neces- sary local permits to handle mate- rial – it is ERA's remit to track what happens to waste," he added. St Julian's mayor Guido Dalli explained that because of the par- ticular realities of the locality, Re- Fab decided it would be better not to install clothes collection banks around the area, for fear of misuse. "Instead, we agreed that locals can drop off clothes at the coun- cil, which are then picked up from there," Dalli said. When asked about what happens after collec- tion, Dalli replied: "I'm sure he does it for money, but our main concern is that the amount of waste is re- duced from landfills." St Paul's Bay mayor Graziella Galea explained that while the lo- cal council had approved the pro- posal made to them by ReFab to install small containers around the locality, it had also reached another agreement. "The local council has also reached an agreement with ReFab that if residents, due to the social realities we live in, require particular clothing, for example for a three-year-old girl, Refab would supply these clothes, choosing the clothes that are in a good condition from the clothing that has been de- posited in these containers." "Rather than donating clothes, this is a method through which clothes which would otherwise have been thrown away by the resi- dents are reused, either in the state they have been disposed of, or else reused as textiles," she added. ElectroWaste, which sponsors the project, is a registered waste broker. Its registration is issued in line with the Waste Management Regulations, which do not distin- guish between different waste types a broker can manage.