With pay-by-use refuse charges to come into force in five weeks, many households are still in the dark about how much they will have to pay next year. Tim O'Brien reports.
Huge changes are about happen to your bin collection. The annual fee is to be scrapped and an apparently fairer, "pay-by-use" system is to be in place by January 1st.
Announced by the then minister for the environment, Martin Cullen, last February, pay-by-use involves charging either by weight or volume. It is designed to reward good environmental behaviour - the household application of the "polluter pays" principle.
However with just five weeks to go to the changeover, some local authorities have adopted an almost bewildering, disparate array of charges and some, including the cities of Waterford, Cork and Galway, as well as Dublin's Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, have yet to set the new charges. Others such as Limerick, Kilkenny and Wicklow have simply pulled out of the waste management business altogether.
And for those who have remained, there are other difficulties. For example, what if everyone reacts as they did to the plastic bag tax and engages in good environmental behaviour, leading to a drop in revenue? Then there would not be enough money raised in charges - as happened in The Netherlands - to pay for the bin lorries and the operatives' wages.
Most local authorities have responded to this potential problem with a two-part charge. The first element is a fixed charge to pay for the service, and the second is a collection charge.
The standing charge in Dublin City is €65 for a small, 140-litre wheelie bin. After that the council proposes to charge per collection, sending out quarterly bills "like any other utility" says the city manager, John Fitzgerald.
But that might not work outside cities where the number of households is reduced. Greenstar, which operates widely in Co Wicklow, has sent out notices of its intention to charge €392 for a standard 240-litre wheelie bin, weighing the waste at a rate to be determined mid-way through next year and reserving the right to submit balancing bills - or refunds - at the end of 2005. The company says an increase in the bag system is also likely but is also unknown.
The Mr Binman company operates pay-by-weight systems in Cos Limerick and Clare. In Limerick city, there is a standing charge of €180 for six months, which is valid for up to 400 kilos, after which an additional charge of 17.5 cent per kilo is levied. Outside Limerick city, the standing charge is €195 for six months.
PAY-BY-WEIGHT is complex and is a good indication of the difficulty in running a business where you know what your costs are going to be, but not your revenue per household. But if it is complex for the private sector to operate pay-by-weight, it is no easier for the public sector.
Parts of Co Cork have piloted pay-by-weight for two years (see panel) and next year the current standing charge of €140 with a per kilo charge of 33 cent will change to a standing charge of €120 with a 46 cent per kilo charge. The fine-tuning of the system - reducing the fixed charge and increasing the per-kilo charge - reflects growing confidence with the weight-based share of revenue.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is also opting for pay-by-weight but is awaiting the outcome of an estimates meeting to set its charges for 2005. The current flat charge is €300.
While there is wide variety in the ways of charging by weight, volume charges appear simpler. In this respect local authorities and private operators who have traditionally charged by the bag can avoid the cataclysmic change indicated by Cullen.
Dublin's Fingal County Council was one of the first local authorities to charge by volume with tags on bags and wheelie bins. Next year the costs will rise from €5 for a wheelie bin tag and €3 for a bag tag to €6 and €3.50 respectively. There is no standing charge.
South Dublin County Council also has a tag system at €6 for a tag for a wheelie bin, and €3 for a tag for a bag, which it doesn't plan to increase. "When we see a better system, we will install it," says Gary Keogh of the council's environment department.
However, volume charges are not free from difficulty either. In the southeast, a not untypical region, Waterford City Council and Waterford County Council coupled with Wexford Town Council, Wexford County Council and town councils at New Ross, Enniscorthy and Gorey are not yet able to tell customers what the charges are for next year, as these fees will be dependent on the annual estimates which will not be decided until early December.
What is clear, however, is that the amount of money being paid by the householder is going to increase in all but a very few cases. In Dublin, for example, if you cut your weekly collection to every second week - a reduction of 50 per cent - your annual waste charge will "only" go up from €195 to €210. If you cut your volume of waste by 75 per cent your charge might reduce to €167 - but these are tough targets to achieve.
EVEN THOSE DETERMINED to reduce, reuse and recycle are faced with additional questions. Some of the most often repeated fears include what happens when other people put their waste in your bin. Get a lock, says Dublin City Council.
Another question is how to operate if you live in a flats complex where the waste goes into a communal bin and some recycle while others don't. Glare at your neighbours seems to be the answer here.
Yet another is what happens if people start to dump "rubbish" in the lower-cost, brown composting bins or the - largely - free recycling bins, as happened in Germany.
Past experience also shows a rise in roadside dumping as waste management gets even more expensive. But of course that behaviour is against the law and fines of up to €1,500 are already in place for those who are caught.