Now that trash costs cash, the Race Against Waste is finally making headway, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
It's not some overwhelming public concern about the environment that has boosted Ireland's recycling rates in recent years, but the simple fact that it is costing more and more for householders and the business community to dispose of their waste.
"There have been phenomenal reductions in the amount of waste going to landfill," says Darrell Crowe, marketing manager of Repak. "What's driving this is economic: landfill costs have risen from £15 (€19.05) to £20 (€25.30) per tonne 10 years ago to €100 to €120 today."
This has had inevitable knock-on effects, with householders and businesses having to pay much higher waste charges that are now directly related to the volume of rubbish they produce. Gone are the days when you could put out a bin without thinking.
One of the key moves was made in March 2004 when Martin Cullen, then minister for the environment, told local authorities to scrap uniform annual charges for waste management in favour of a charging system based on the weight or volume of household waste. Because people were to be charged only for what they threw out, there would be an inbuilt incentive to minimise waste and recycle as much as possible.
This system was modelled in part on the 15-cent levy on plastic supermarket bags, which reduced their use by 90 per cent.
Householders covered by a pilot project in Co Monaghan had already seen their bills fall after flat-rate annual charges were replaced by weight-based fees with the introduction of kerbside recycling in 2003. The volume of waste going to landfill fell by 30 to 40 per cent.
Since Dublin City Council introduced a €5 "lifting charge" for rubbish bins on January 1st this year, almost half of all households in the city have stopped putting bins out for collection every week - thus saving themselves €130 a year compared with more regular users.
In Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, where the county council operates a complex system - a lifting charge of €4, plus 20 cent per kilo, on top of its annual standing charge of €80 - the results have been even more remarkable: up to 60 per cent of households now put out their bins bi-monthly.
The incentive to recycle is even stronger in Co Wicklow, where private waste-management contractor Greenstar charges up to €22 per bin lift. To avail of the company's lowest price of €264 a year, householders must limit themselves to putting out their bins just once a month.
UNDER THE EU Waste Management Directive, local authorities are required to recoup the full cost of waste services in line with the "polluter pays" principle. As a result, charges to householders are likely to increase by at least a third over the next two to three years.
In the Netherlands, however, it was found that if everyone followed the advice to "reduce, re-use and recyle", thereby cutting their waste bills, there simply wasn't enough revenue generated to make the system self- financing or (in the case of the private sector) profitable.
Hence the creeping introduction of charges for "green bin" recycling in a number of counties, including Kerry, Kilkenny, Leitrim, Louth, Meath, Roscommon, Sligo, south Tipperary and Waterford. In Co Leitrim, a private operator charges €9 per lift of a grey bin and €6 per lift of a green bin.
There are also wide disparities in the performance of local authorities, as shown by a report submitted to Minister for the Environment Dick Roche last June by the Local Government Management Services Board on a range of "service indicators", including waste management.
The top five local authorities for recycling waste collected from households in 2004 were Galway City Council, with a rate of 49.5 per cent, Cork County Council (36.6 per cent), Waterford County Council (23.4 per cent), Galway County Council (22.3 per cent) and Louth County Council (20.9 per cent).
The bottom five, in terms of household waste collected and going to landfill, were Mayo County Council, with a rate of 97.5 per cent, Cork City Council (97.4 per cent), Kildare County Council (92.8 per cent), Roscommon County Council (90 per cent) and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council (85.3 per cent).
However, it is pointed out in the report that these figures only cover waste collected from individual households and exclude other means used to recycle, such as bring banks and civic amenity centres.
"It therefore does not represent the overall recycling figure for authorities," the report states.
The number of bring banks provided by local councils for bottles, cans, newspapers and other recyclables has risen from 426 in 1995 to 1,767 in 2004, a substantial increase. There is now a bring bank for every 2,000 people, providing ample opportunities for recycling.
At home, meanwhile, everyone has a green bin for recyclables and a grey bin for waste. Some people also have a compost bin for kitchen and garden waste, even if it spawns an infestation of fruit flies. But there is still quite a lot of confusion over what can and can't be recycled.
Oxigen, the company collecting from households in Dublin city, takes "dry recyclables" - cans, paper, cardboard, and so on - but won't take plastic bottles, even though they're "dry" too. The reason given for this is that there wasn't a market for PET or HDPE containers when the company signed the contract.
In early September, it was revealed that Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council have been sending garden waste to landfill because they have no "green waste" recycling facilities. Neither does Dún Laoghaire- Rathdown County Council, though it is planning one such facility.
In the Dublin area, only South Dublin County Council has a green waste centre where hedge clippings, tree prunings and grass cuttings are turned into compost. Dublin City Council had one in St Anne's Park, but opposition from local residents led to its closure.
LAST JANUARY, THE Consumers' Association of Ireland called for the imposition of a more streamlined and transparent waste-management regime. Its chief executive, Dermot Jewell, said the "lack of certainty and consistency" of the existing system made it look "unprofessional".
According to PJ Rudden, of RPS-MCOS consulting engineers, it's no coincidence that the three cities with the highest recycling rates - Galway, Waterford and Dublin - are the only ones where the local authorities remain directly in charge of waste management.
The Race Against Waste campaign has clearly made an impact, not least through its targeted publicity campaigns, such as the Action at Work programme, aimed at large organisations in the public and private sectors. But it will be some time before we get the whole issue sorted.
Further information from www.raceagainstwaste.ie