Set against the lapping waters of the western Mediterranean, the mounds of half-chewed apples, takeout containers and dirty nappies began accumulating in January. Fed by a continuous convoy of trucks hauling rubbish from across Gibraltar, the pile of waste soon swelled to some 6,000 tonnes.
“It was a mountain of trash,” said Antonio Muñoz of the ecologist group Verdemar-Ecologistas en Acción. “All sorts of rubbish, all mixed together.”
The organisation was among the first to sound the alarm over an unexpected consequence of Brexit: the thousands of tonnes of rubbish left with nowhere to go as the territory grappled with post-Brexit paperwork.
The tiny territory had long sent its rubbish to a nearby sorting facility in the Spanish province of Cádiz. When the Brexit transition period ended, so did the arrangement.
As officials in Gibraltar and London wrestled with the cumbersome processes and procedures required to ship the waste as a non-EU member, the Rock – densely populated and with an area of just 2.6 square miles – scrambled to find space for its ever accumulating waste.
New equipment supplied by the UK was used to shred and compact the rubbish, freeing up space on the eastern side of Gibraltar, where the rubbish was being kept.
Contingency plans laid out other options for the 30,000 tonnes of waste produced annually in the territory; from storing it in the territory’s vast network of tunnels to potentially shipping it to the UK.
“It’s not something we were expecting, but something we were prepared for,” said Stephen Warr, a senior environmental officer with the government.
After more than two months of accumulating waste in Gibraltar, Madrid signed off on the paperwork in late February. It took weeks to clear out the backlog of rubbish, with the last bits of refuse cleared just as Gibraltar was hit with a fierce storm that sparked swells of more than 4 metres.
Ecologists described it as a close call. “If we had had that kind of powerful storm when the rubbish was there, we would be talking about plastic scattered across the Strait of Gibraltar,” said Muñoz.
“The impact would have been significant. We’re talking about a key crossing for birds, cetaceans and tuna – all of it would have entered the food chain.”
The Gibraltar government said precautions had been taken at the storage area to prevent the rubbish from ending up in the sea, such as a wire mesh that sits overtop and a heavy curtain capable of warding off strong winds. The use of tunnels – which this time ended up storing an estimated 10 tonnes of waste – also allows for inert rubbish to be stored without having to worry about winds.
The pile up of rubbish came as talks continue about Gibraltar’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU. The British overseas territory – where 96% of voters in the 2016 Brexit referendum backed remaining in the EU – was left out of the trade deal struck between the UK and EU on Christmas Eve 2020.
Instead, its fate has been the topic of months of parallel negotiations that have focused on preserving free movement across the shared border with Spain while steering clear of the centuries-old sovereignty dispute between London and Madrid.
Amid initial hopes that the talks would wrap up in mid-2021, Spain’s foreign minister recently called for the negotiations to be sped up. “Talks on Gibraltar must intensify so a mutually beneficial agreement can be reached shortly,” José Manuel Albares said on Twitter after a meeting with the British foreign secretary on the sidelines of the recent Nato summit. Liz Truss said her government was “determined to make progress” on the negotiations.
The drawn-out timeline is being watched carefully in Gibraltar. As is customary with permits involving waste, Madrid’s authorisation to ship the waste is set to expire within a year. “The authorisation is short term and will require renewal before the next 12 months,” the Gibraltar government said in a statement.
In the meantime, the contingency equipment to shred and compact waste was being kept in place in the territory’s waste storage area. “It’s there in case we have to use it again,” said Warr. “Hopefully we don’t.”
