Every summer, precisely when the waste system is pushed to its greatest test, it fails miserably.Heaps of garbage bags pile up in our streets, and we are left to see and smell the government’s failure. But it does not have to be like this.PN has launched an ambitious new Public Cleanliness Consultation Document to clean our streets from this mess.The first area of change centres around curbside pickup: that is when you take your garbage bag out and wait for it to be picked up. On average, each person generates about 1.5kg of waste per day this way.Our proposed solution to tackling this is the introduction of underground bins where possible and an increase of collection frequency by clever use of partitioned trucks where this is not.Underground waste bins are large containers installed beneath streets or curbs. Residents deposit their waste through a small chute into a sealed container that can hold around three to five times the volume of a standard street bin.The underground placement keeps waste cooler, minimising odours and pests.Emptying is straightforward: specialised collection trucks tip the container from its housing, emptying and lowering it back in minutes.There are a number of off the shelf solutions already installed across many European cities. Great first pilot locations can be where bring-in sites already exist, or beneath current no parking zones in the densest of city intersections.And while they might not be a possible fit everywhere, just a 10% adoption would liberate our streets of thousands of tons of garbage bags, giving the curbs back to pedestrians.In places we can’t reach this way, the number of collection days can be ramped up through use of partitioned garbage trucks that can collect different types of waste on a single run: essentially making every collection daily, doubling or tripling the current collection, depending on the bag.Greater enforcement is another crucial pillar, since a number of the problems we encounter are already illegal, but remain unenforced. Currently the only agency enforcing garbage regulations is ERA, which is severely understaffed for such an undertaking.We propose a twofold solution: drastically increase the number of enforcement officials and consider giving local councils the ability to issue their own fines as regulated by a relevant national authority.Reaching these goals need not come at the cost of sustainability. For a start, the full electrification of the fleet of vehicles used for garbage collection and other cleanliness activities would be an easy win.With Malta’s water crisis, any water used for street cleaning should not be potable but polished New Water wherever possible.And a full embrace of digital infrastructure, by adopting smart bins that signal when they need to be emptied, could lead to more efficient route planning, freeing our streets of traffic.Besides real solutions that can be implemented in the now, PN’s new policy document also emphasises the need to stop the cycle of knee jerk reactions to crises.Just like anything else, waste management and cleanliness are facets in dire need of proper study and planning. This is why PN has and will continue to emphasise on the need of a carrying capacity study, to be the basis of the waste solutions for the decades ahead.Things that do not work as they should are frustrating for all of us. But once we get the complaining out of our system, we need to understand that the challenge of applying solutions to problems can come from us all too: if not the government, then the opposition.We have pushed this consultation document through in the heat of summer because rather than relent, we choose to hope that we can tackle old problems with new energy.Eve Borg Bonello is a Nationalist MP and the Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Public Cleanliness•