For those lucky enough to live in the north of Malta, the smell of the Magħtab landfill is an almost-constant presence in the nostrils.
But if the rest of us want to get a whiff of that trademark stench of rotting, burning rubbish, we have to wait for the wind to be in the right direction, or take a drive down the coast road.
Until now, that is.
A new artisanal perfumery called Miżbla (the Maltese word for rubbish dump) has captured the landfill’s noxious fumes and turned them into a wearable fragrance.
Miżbla was founded a year ago by brothers James and Adrian Bonello. Since then, they’ve been hard at work extracting and bottling the site’s famous foul-smelling gasses. And now, they’re ready to launch their creations.
“Much like Eurovision, people say the landfill stinks, but secretly they love it and wish they could smell it all the time,” says James.
“So when two years ago the government shelved plans to turn the place into a park, we saw an opportunity.”
After spending a year studying perfumery in Paris, the pair returned to Malta and set about using their new skills to create an olfactory sensation.
“Making concentrated essence of detritus isn’t an easy process,” Adrian says.
“To start with, you have to gather a lot of rubbish. For one 75 millilitre bottle of perfume, you need about 50 kilos of trash. Luckily, there’s a lot of rubbish at Magħtab.
“There was a lot of trial and error involved,” adds James. “The hardest part was finding a liquid that could retain the aroma of fetid garbage. In the end, we found that old pastizzi oil worked best.”
Miżbla will initially be launching two perfumes – Burning Trash for men, and Bin Juice for women.
“Burning Trash is a smokey scent, with bass notes of incinerated car tyres and dead animals. Bin Juice is a lighter yet still potent fragrance – imagine a bin bag that’s been left outside for a week in St. Paul’s Bay in mid-August,” says Adrian.
Miżbla has also managed to secure Ben Camille as a brand ambassador.
“We couldn’t think of anyone more suited to being the face of Burning Trash,” says James.
Burning Trash and Bin Juice will be launched officially at the Intercontinental Hotel this Saturday, after a live performance by Airport Impressions.
Meanwhile, the Bonello brothers are already working on their next fragrance – rumoured to be Eau de Fish Farm Slime.
