Low-impact living by Jane Powers
Twenty-one per cent of Irish households don't use a refuse collection service. Some of these dwellings are run by model citizens who recycle and compost assiduously, and who bring the rest of their waste to a municipal facility. Others are managed using that time-honoured Irish tradition of rubbish burning. Indeed, I remember as a child building villages of boxes and cartons, surrounding them with forests of garden waste, and sending the whole lot up in flames.
Alas, such simple pleasures are now outlawed, contravening the Waste Management and Air Pollution Acts of 1996 and 1997. Nonetheless, 80 per cent of local authorities report that backyard burning is a significant problem, especially in rural areas.
The trouble with such fires is that they burn at a relatively low temperature, releasing toxins into the air. Some of these, such as dioxins, settle on the ground, including on pasture, where they may be ingested by dairy cows and introduced into the human food chain via milk. Dioxins are persistent substances, accumulating in fat and affecting health (at least one is a known carcinogen). They are released when plastics, rubber and even some paper and cardboard are ignited. According to a recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 50 per cent of this country's dioxins emanate from backyard burning.
Besides dioxins, a pile of burning rubbish may produce carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and great wafts of other noxious substances. It's no safer to burn your waste in a barrel or domestic incinerator - and their use is also illegal.
But what of good old-fashioned bonfires, and the nostalgia-inducing smell of autumn leaves smouldering? Also banned, I'm afraid. They, too, are a source of harmful emissions. A dry heap of garden waste gives off less particulate matter and organic compounds when it's burning, but a moist heap emits less carbon monoxide. Either way, you can't win.
One kind of backyard burning appliance that is not banned - but that many argue should be - is the patio heater. According to the Guardian's Leo Hickman, the gas cylinder in one of these outdoor devices empties 10 times faster than it would if it were heating a similarly-sized area indoors. Or look at it another way (as the BBC's website has): using a patio heater for two hours produces the same amount of carbon dioxide that a car produces in a day. That's impressive gas guzzling.