Anton McNulty
One in five households in Mayo still has no refuse collection service with 20 per cent of the county’s waste unaccounted for.
The statistics of Mayo’s household waste was outlined by Michael Joyce, the Connacht Waste Co-ordinator to members of the Strategic Policy Committee on Environment. He explained that at present 60 per cent of the provinces waste goes to the landfill with the plan to reduce that figure to 19 per cent by 2015.
In relation to the refuse figures in Mayo, Mr Joyce said 65 per cent of waste in Mayo goes to landfill compared to just 47 per cent in Galway City. However, he said it was easier to provide recycling facilities in a city compared to rural areas.
“Twenty per cent of waste in Mayo is not collected where sparsely populated areas have no collection service provided. In Mayo one in five houses have no collection service but the figure is good compared to other regions like Leitrim.
“In cities it is easier because there are no field or hedges to disappear waste behind and in urban areas like Castlebar, Ballina and Westport there are high collection rates,” he said.
However, he said it was an issue that there was no recycling facilities for the north west and the south east of the county which he said could lead to dumping and burning of refuse. Director of Services, Paddy Mahon said they were plans in place to provide facilities for these areas.
The Connacht Waste Management Plan also looks to increase recycling to 48 per cent and have 33 per cent of waste converted to energy by 2015. At present no waste is converted to energy in Connacht.
Cllr Peter Flynn said that this sounded like a ‘huge jump’ and added that there was no incentive for waste collection providers to provide a brown bin for householders. Mr Joyce said all waste collection services have to provide a three bin collection service.
He said if they wanted to meet these figures there needed to be a culture change in society and politicians had to show leadership to get the message across.
Cllr Flynn agreed saying that if people knew that they had to be provided with a brown bin they would demand it and the company will have to provide it.