Election issues: waste management Local councils' success in implementing recycling schemes has been mixed, wrties Liam Reid
For many homes, the annual cost of having their rubbish disposed of is now greater than their electricity bill.
There are great differences in what householders pay around the State and the quality of waste services they get. Since the last local election, there has been phenomenal change in how domestic refuse is treated, with local authorities to the fore in handling that change.
In the last five years, most homes in Ireland have seen the cost of having their weekly bins collected more than double. It has also seen a huge disparity in what people are paying on an annual basis - from €190 in Dublin to €400 in Cork.
The cost for those using private schemes is even greater. Many local authorities do not have their own collection service, and householders pay anything up to €500 a year to private operators for their weekly bin service.
Further changes are to be introduced which, taken with the economic realities of the business, could see those annual charges rise even more.
The changes of the last five years have been driven by regional waste plans, all adopted by each council in recent years. These plans have provided for the creation of modern, efficient and environmentally friendly ways of dealing with our waste.
As part of this, many of the old county dumps have closed, and have yet to be replaced with alternatives.
The result has been huge hikes in the charges for disposing of a load of waste in an Irish landfill - as high as €240 a tonne - which, in turn, has forced up the price of refuse services.
This is all part of the plan, with higher prices encouraging householders to recycle as much waste as possible.
The plans all provide ambitious targets for recycling facilities and services.
The next stage occurs next January, when all refuse collectors will be required to put pay-by-weight or pay-by-volume schemes in place.
The scheme will be introduced in various forms at first, with the immediate effect of abolishing the flat fee system which is still in place in a majority of areas.
It will be replaced by schemes using micro-chip technology in bin lorries which will weigh each bin.
Simpler methods where people will pay a set fee each time their bin is emptied, or buy specific bin bags or tags, will also be allowed.
The result will be that those who do not recycle or reduce waste could be facing significant extra charges.
Pilot schemes such as those in Co Cork charge a flat fee and then a price per kilo - €140 and 33 cents in Cork's case.
Therefore, a family producing 30 kilos of waste a week - not an unrealistic amount for a large family - could face annual fees of over €600 a year if they do not recycle.
And therein lies the problem. All of the regional waste management plans contain ambitious proposals for recycling facilities. These include door to door collection services, recycling centres and bottle banks.
However, the delivery of these services and facilities has been mixed. Although there has been a major increase in recycling activity, many homes still do not have easy access to recycling facilities.
At the end of 2003 there were only 55 recycling centres in the country, just half of the 110 promised by the plans. Figures for kerb-side collection of recyclables are on the face of it somewhat better, with 564,000 homes having some form of service, again leaving nearly one million without.
The greater Dublin area does best - around half of all homes are now served by a kerbside recycling service. However, most of the city centre and apartment buildings, where people are least likely to have a car to bring material to a recycling centre, are still waiting for a green bin service.
The reality for many voters is that greatly increasing the amount they recycle is still not an option, and they may have no option but to endure higher charges.
Individual local authorities are largely responsible for the funding and development of recycling facilities in their areas, which will be key to enabling householders to reduce the rubbish they place in their wheelie bins.
The simple fact is that the amount you can expect to pay in the future will be almost wholly dependent on which area you live in and on the decisions made by your local councillors.