The Waste Management and Resource Recovery Act, no. 3 of 2023.

This Act, consisting of 55 articles and divided into nine Parts, provides for a regulatory framework in order to ensure the environmentally safe and sound management of solid and hazardous wastes and a sustainable waste management system through the adoption of a circular economy approach focusing on waste reduction, reuse, material recovery and recycling. The Act concerns: commercial waste; waste prevention and awareness programmes to inform the public of the impact of waste on health and the environment; interference with the ecological systems; hazardous waste; household waste; industrial waste, including waste arising from agricultural activities, and the supply of electricity to the public; solid waste; recycling activity; transboundary movement of hazardous waste. Part II of the Act concerns duties and powers of the Minister and of the Department of waste management and resource recovery, including: development of Policies, National Strategies and Action Plans for solid and hazardous waste management; adoption of the concept of circularity in waste management; regulating disposal sites of waste and private operators’ activities in the field of waste management; implementing measures related to the sustainable and integrated management of waste, classification of waste, resource efficiency, waste prevention and reduction; monitoring the collection, treatment and disposal of waste by local authorities and waste management operators in the private sector; providing for the storage, packaging, labelling and transportation of hazardous wastes.
Parts III and IV concern functions and powers of the National waste management coordination committee and the technical advisory committee. Part V defines objectives and principles of integrated waste management and circularity: preventing and minimising the harmful or adverse effects of waste on humans and their well-being, animals and plants, their livelihood and their natural environment; ensuring that materials, products and any waste derived from recycling do not have a high hazard potential. The same Part concerns the preparation of the National solid waste management Strategy and Action Plan, and its content; duties of local authorities relating to the Strategy and Action Plan; duties and obligations of waste generators; submission of data and information on waste; public consultation. Part VI concerns duties and powers of local authorities, including: management and removal of waste; mitigating or preventing any pollution to the environment or danger to humans or animal or plant life. Part VII concerns hazardous waste management, and includes: definition of hazardous waste, control and management of hazardous waste, hazardous waste generated by households, preparation of a hazardous waste management Strategy and Action Plan.
Further Parts include: licensing, registration and enforcement; prohibition notice; offences and penalties; extended producer responsibility; prevention of pollution; Ministerial power to issue Regulations and the matters provided therein; amendment of the Local Government Act, the Environment Protection Act, and the Dangerous Chemicals Control Act.