Almost one third of households without waste collection service

Anton McNulty

Thirty percent of households in the Connacht/Ulster region do not avail of a waste collection system and they will have to be incentivised in order to get on a system.
The Connacht/Ulster Regional Waste Management Plan was outlined to members of the Planning, Environment and Agriculture SPC by its co-ordinator, Kevin Swift at their meeting last week.
One of the objectives of the plan, which will run until 2020, is to increase recycling from its current figure of 40 percent to 50 percent and decrease the amount of residual waste.
Mr Swift said in order to do that they will have to get more people to avail of a waste collection system but feels this will only happen if they are incentivised to do so.
“We want to incentivise people not just to segregate waste but to get onto a waste system. In this region 30 percent of people are not on a system at all. So if you’re not on a system you are simply not doing the right thing.
“One of the difficulties with the current charging arrangement was the fixed element to the charge was too high to incentivise people particulaly in rural areas who don’t produce a lot of waste to get onto a system. When you are on the system and you do the right thing and separate your waste, general waste will be minimal,” he said.
Pay-By-Weight
Mr Swift was critical of the decision to suspend the introduction of the Pay-by-Weight system, which he felt would have incentivised people to segregate their waste.
“It was a law introduced but as we saw laws are easily sidestepped. Pay by weight will encourage waste prevention behaviour and assist us reaching our targets. However, politics came into play as everyone knows,” he said.
The presentation revealed that the majority of the residual waste from Mayo will be incinerated in thermal energy plants like the controversial Poolbeg incinerator in Dublin.  In 2017, 700,000 tonnes will go to landfills while 600,000 tonnes will go to thermal energy plants but by the end of 2020 it is proposed that zero waste will go into landfills.
Sinn Féin councillor Gerry Murray felt the move to embrace the incineration of waste was a retrograde step as it removed the green edge the country had over the rest of Europe.
“I am surprised we have embraced incineration in circumstances that will have long term consequences on our beef and dairy sector. The organic farm sector are more than disappointed that we are going down the road of incineration because it removes the edge we had over the rest of Europe and the world. That was based on a survey where Ireland had the lowest level of dioxins in cows milk anywhere in the world. It is extraordinary that we are going to compromise that particular green edge we had over the market place,” he said.