What would you say is the greatest environ-
mental achievement Gibraltar has implement-
ed in the last couple of years?
It is the increased awareness. I remember giving
a talk on Climate Change in the 80’s in John Mac-
intosh Hall, about 20 people attended and nobody
knew what I was talking about. Climate change has
been happening ever since the Industrial Revolution
in the 1800’s, awareness is decades old but hasn’t
been recognized until recently.
The way society has changed; using less fuel,
electricity, treasuring our green areas and aware-
ness of single use plastic, I think these are all
achievements. The international media and internet
has done a lot, but I think that one of the things that
has helped develop awareness in Gibraltar is the
fact that there is a minister for the environment that
genuinely believes, who is receptive, and who has
worked with the support of his colleagues and Chief
Minister in making steps. When people find that you
listen, people will open up and feel empowered in
making a difference so I like to claim a little bit of
the merit in the change that we can see in Gibral-
tar. Some people now come up to me claiming that
I am not doing enough and I always say, I will never
do enough for the environment. Change has to be
done in a responsible way in order to not risk going
too fast. Even though it is a crisis, sometimes going
too fast without people understanding and bringing
people with you, you risk falling flat on your face,
and people react against it. We all have to go on
this together.
Are their plans to expand Gibraltar’s recycling
facilities?
Recycling has been a victim of it’s own success.
People forget that when I became a minister in
December 2011 you could only recycle paper and
cardboard. You couldn’t recycle plastic, tetra brick,
glass or oil, this I introduced in early 2012 and was
transformational. People have responded positively,
putting pressure on the system. As figures increase
annually we have a few challenges ahead.
We still have to take our recycling to Spain, we are
trying to deal with it a bit locally by trying to segregate
it better. We will provide more bins, unfortunately at
times the bins are not properly used. I have resisted
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OTWO 01 / AUGUST 2019