Waste Disposal, Illegal Dumping and just how easy it is...

Yet another flat-back/skip-back/bucket-back Dyna passed me yesterday -weighted down to the point of axle failure, heading in the distinctly opposite direction of the dump and heading suspiciously straight towards the Clare Hills.

It raised a few issues for me (beyond my initial reaction that, if up to what I suspect they're up to, these fcukers should be gassed like the rats they are.)

After searching through Limerick Corporations website I eventually got a link to a permit application. I couldn't believe that, unless I've missed something...

*€1200 for the permit gets you up and running in this business. I can't make out if you have to pay an EXTRA €380 to carry Oils and fluorescents or if you can get away with paying just the €380 if you undertake to carry nothing else.

*While they ask for insurance details to be supplied -there's no Bond to be paid. I can scarcely think of an industry where a bond equivalent to the mortgage of a bloody decent house should be payable.

* No suitability of vehicle specifications. Personally I don't think an open back dyna that someone has strapped a few sheets of marine-ply or caging onto is a safe, sanitary or suitable way to move waste of any kind around the place.

*You should be required to have these vehicles fitted with some sort of tracking GPS so their whereabouts can be identified at all times. I'm sure there's weigh-bridge technology out there too that measures the changing weights of a vehicle and logs it. Make 'em fit the gear.

Was going to post this in the Current Affairs forum as it's current and always will be and I suspect is going to get worse before it gets better. Move it if need be.

Can't argue with you there LR. When householders are paying through the nose to have their refuse lifted, a lot of companies are dumping illegaly to save a few bob. Anyone caught doing this should be sent to jail for a very long time.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Can't argue with you there LR. When householders are paying through the nose to have their refuse lifted, a lot of companies are dumping illegaly to save a few bob. Anyone caught doing this should be sent to jail for a very long time.

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It is very expensive I know -our 50L bin cost €196 for six months. It's rarely more than half full as there's only three of us in the house and we're pretty good for recycling. But I've neighbours who give their rubbish to the chavs in blue Dynas because they say the reputable (if obnoxious) main local service provider is too expensive. But these same neighbours have large 06 and 07 vehicles in their driveways. Priorities are up their holes.

I'm guessing you'd like to see refuse collected by local authorities and paid for from central taxation* (apologies if I'm being presumtuous btw) but if we take it as a given for the short to medium term at least that this isn't going to happen then we really have to do something else.
The main service provider here can charge whatever he likes basically as there's now no real competition in the region. Nor is there incentive to get into the business unless the cowboys I referred to earlier are crushed because they can undercut legit operators. You can only go down the competition route if the playing field is level for all.

*I'm conflicted on this issue myself. For certain the service was more thorough and seemed less expensive at individual level when local authorities used collect -but I used work for Limerick Corpo in this very area and the service was massively abused by people from every walk of life. People would dump anything and everything because there was no incentive to do otherwise. I've seen instances of site clearance done through domestic refuse collection. Wheelie bins full of brick ...that kind of nonsense -and at least brick is relatively non-hazardous.

We also had many, many instances of individuals -often in the most well to do areas of Limerick who were'nt paying a penny toward their refuse collection. If I recall right there was a one off payment of either fifty or seventy-five punts to be paid when the wheelie bins came in (1994-1995). The bin would be dropped off and a bill issued. Two years later we were still trying to prize it out of people who were claiming to have made private refuse collection arrangements but whom I was catching red handed using the corpo bin ...which they'd invariably claimed had been collected, stolen or had never arrived in the first place.

our house is in the countryside, the *******s only come twice a week now to collect our rubbish, cant throw certain things into it, have to seperate the rubbish, which is pointless since its all going to china anyway!!! cant burn it, so the alternatives are......................................;)

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Originally Posted by bennocelt

our house is in the countryside, the *******s only come twice a week now to collect our rubbish

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Twice a week ha? Poor diddums.

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Originally Posted by bennocelt

...cant throw certain things into it, have to seperate the rubbish, which is pointless since its all going to china anyway!!! cant burn it, so the alternatives are......................................;)

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Jeesis don't they make life hard on you.

Its once a week here in Dublin. €8 per collection. Wouldn't consider that "through the nose"

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Originally Posted by Dodge

Its once a week here in Dublin. €8 per collection. Wouldn't consider that "through the nose"

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A lot of people would. Its €12 euro in Drogheda now which is up from €8 in the 4 years I've been living there.

We used to buy the bags, now gone for the wheelie bins and actually it's probably less than we thought. When we first moved in you had to pay up front whereas these days you have a direct debit option. It's pay per lift, with the charging based on bands - fortnightly green bin lifts are free.

On the dumping however, I'm shocked by the lack of control by councils. We've a few landfills around us, which got the licence based on reclaiming for agricultural use - 5 foot of sub soil and top soil (schedule 10 waste it's called). There is no evidence of them enforcing the regulations of their own licence, and no evidence of any checks of what is going into the sites which is one of the conditions of the licence. And this in one of the councils that has suffered most with illegal dumps, from where the Minister for the Environment who's responsible for the legislation also resides!

Now whether this is down to council inertia or whether it's another symptom on the Public Sector recruitment embargo I'm not sure. Having had dealings with the council, I'd say the latter...

You have to pay for the green bin in Drogheda which IMO is the biggest scandal.

Should say our green bin is free

If certainly seems like the local authorities should be enforcing the laws a lot better as its not as if they haven't had enough warnings about illegal dumping. There should be much larger fines & individuals should be criminally responsible (should stop them closing companies & starting again).

If you do not charge people for collecting their rubbish then they will not recycle. Its not surprise that as soon as people charged recycling increased a lot. The City Council will not collect our apartment complex rubbish (won't come inside the gates) so we have to get it done privately & because recycling is more expensive so recycling option (will be changing soon) so people dump everything.

My parents are in Cork County area & using combination of composting & bringing goods to the local recycling centre i guess would have difficulty filling a large bin every 2 weeks.

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Originally Posted by Lionel Ritchie

Twice a week ha? Poor diddums.



Jeesis don't they make life hard on you.

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no not really, just burn and dump;)

Personally I've always felt that we should introduce a pay as you recycle scheme over here. I was in upstate New York for a bit, and when households recycle their plastic, cans and glass over there they are given 5c per item, which looked like a good incentive for a lot of people to actually recycle, as the drop off points always seemed to be busy. Over here I get odd looks for saying I recycle glass, and sometimes even for using a seperate recycling bag, which is just idiotic in my opinion.

Over here, if you fail to separate garbage properly, the refuse collectors may search through the garbage in an attempt to identify you. If successful you will be given a 50,000yen fine. (about 350 euros?)

Then they take the garbage, compress it to an unbelievable density, and use it to help reclaim land. Anybody who was in Yokohama in 2002 may remember the tallest building in Japan, in the Minato Mirai area. All built on compressed garbage. (among other things, of course)

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Originally Posted by jebus

Personally I've always felt that we should introduce a pay as you recycle scheme over here. I was in upstate New York for a bit, and when households recycle their plastic, cans and glass over there they are given 5c per item, which looked like a good incentive for a lot of people to actually recycle, as the drop off points always seemed to be busy. Over here I get odd looks for saying I recycle glass, and sometimes even for using a seperate recycling bag, which is just idiotic in my opinion.

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Surprised you get odd looks for recycling. Thought most people do nowadays. We have a pretty good recycling centre nearby and we seperate everything into containers and when they are full we take them off to the centre. Don't use the green bin as its a rip off and is not lifted often enough for the amount we recycle.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Surprised you get odd looks for recycling. Thought most people do nowadays.

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Same here, and I thought so too! :)

Actually the more I talk to people, the more I realise that most people I know don't do enough recycling, example being that outside of myself and my flatmate in our place, my girlfriend in her house, my mother (although she does get paid for it as she owns a business) and then one other friend, I don't know anyone who recycles glass

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Originally Posted by pete

If you do not charge people for collecting their rubbish then they will not recycle. Its not surprise that as soon as people charged recycling increased a lot.

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It's getting the balance right though, if that was the aim. Waste collection has reached such a cost that imo it is encouraging more illegal dumping and backyard burning which surely defeats the purpose? If the aim is truely to encourage a more responsible attitude to waste, then it's not working...

As for glass, I'd say the fact that it doesn't go in the green bin probably puts lazy feckers off bothering to recycle glass.

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Originally Posted by Macy

It's getting the balance right though, if that was the aim. Waste collection has reached such a cost that imo it is encouraging more illegal dumping and backyard burning which surely defeats the purpose? If the aim is truely to encourage a more responsible attitude to waste, then it's not working...

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Can't disagree with that.

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Originally Posted by Macy

As for glass, I'd say the fact that it doesn't go in the green bin probably puts lazy feckers off bothering to recycle glass.

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I think we shipping this to Scotland now as no local plant?

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