A LOAD OF RUBBISH: LOCKDOWN WASTE IS ON THE RISE
THE INCREASED QUANTITY OF WASTE PRODUCED BY HOUSEHOLDS DURING COVID-19 OFFERS A CLUE TO PANDEMIC LIFESTYLES
WEXFORD people are generating mountains of extra cardboard, cans and bottles while confined to their homes during lockdown, keeping recycling centres and waste collection companies busy.
The coronavirus pandemic has had a noticeable effect on the type and level of rubbish we are creating, and sifting through the evidence gives some forensic clues to our lockdown lifestyles.
The ongoing closure of shops has led to an explosion in online shopping. Our thwarted need for retail therapy has been finding an outlet in remote consumerism and convoys of delivery vans are wearing a path to our doors.
When the well-tracked items arrive via post or courier, they are encased in an overly-generous layer of protective cardboard packaging which quickly takes up wheelie bin space.
No amount of flattening, squeezing or standing in the bin will minimise all this recyclable material and some customers have been forced to request additional bins from collection operators, to cope with the excess.
The shuttering of pubs has resulted in an increased level of drinking at home and a corresponding rise in the amount of empty beer cans and wine bottles that we are amassing, prompting Wexford County Council to open four extra bring sites and to organise more regular collections from its 111 recycling stations around the county.
There was a massive 30% rise in the tonnage received at bottle banks in Wexford last year, representing an extra 1,000 tonnes of glass and cans. In 2019, the figure was 3,300 tonnes and last year, it was 4,327 tonnes.
‘From the minute the first lockdown came last March, it never let up,’ said Peter Byrne, Senior Services Supervisor in the Environment section of the Council.
‘ The bring centres would have been as busy last April, May and June as they would usually be at Christmas and that has continued during the year.
‘We opened four new sites because we were under pressure – two in Enniscorthy at Bellefield and Island Road, one in Glenbrien village and one at The Gap on the Wicklow border.’
Cardboard has increased by 10% at the county’s four civic amenity sites in Wexford, New Ross, Gorey and Enniscorthy with 448 tonnes of cardboard in 2020, compared to 407 tonnes in 2019, but this figure does not take account of the tonnes of recyclable cardboard picked up by waste collection companies including AES, Panda/Greenstar and Whelans.
Collection trucks are now filling up quicker, requiring additional runs, according to Andrew Egan, Commercial Manager at Greenstar, based in Gorey. Where previously a truck would take the contents of 600 bins, now it’s more like 500.
The Assistant County GAA Secretary reports that there has been a 30% increase overall in the level of domestic waste, with drivers having been re-routed from commercial routes which are now inactive due to the lockdown, to take up the increased demand on household routes.
‘Many people are working from home and many commercial outlets such as hotels, restaurants and pubs are closed, so it follows that more waste is being created at home’, said Andrew.
Greenstar is the contractor charged with managing much of the Wexford County Council waste, including recyclable and non-recyclable materials from civic amenity and bring centres.
Former Wexford hurler Billy Byrne, sales manager with AES, based in Rosslare, said that while the commercial end of the waste business largely collapsed due to the closure of shops, restaurants and pubs, the household sector has increased.
‘Some of the bigger shops and supermarkets that are still open have been far busier and they have been generating more recycling while the domestic end of the business has seen a big increase in the overall amount of waste collected.
‘We would be taking about 20 tonnes more of aluminium cans a month from the domestic market but that wouldn’t be all down to people drinking alcohol. People are spending more time at home and cooking a lot more and it would include food cans and soft drinks cans as well.
‘More people are working from home and their children are at home all day and they are generating more recycling, some of which would normally go into the bins in schools and workplaces.
‘ The schools are closed – we would have seen a lot of recycling out of schools and that’s now coming through the household stream.’
There is a 25% increase in the amount of glass recycling coming from domestic settings and again it’s not all wine bottles but also includes glass food jars, according to Billy and compost waste is also up 25% because people are cooking more at home.
The amount of waste and recycling in individual bins has increased. ‘A recycling bin might have been three-quarters
full before, now the weight has gone up.
‘ The average weight has gone up, the amount of recycling is up. There are commercial customers that would be looking for extra bins to provide more capacity and also because certain material cannot currently be recycled.’
A lot of the material generated by nursing homes, which would previously have been recyclable, is now going into the waste bin along with PPE, in accordance with regulations and must remain in situ for 72 hours before it is picked up.
Meanwhile, businesses in the pharmaceutical sector have been busier and that has led to an increase in waste and recycling from the industry.
AES also experienced a big rise in demand for skips last spring as people spent lockdown clearing out their sheds and garages and Billy expects this trend to be repeated as the weather improves.
The local authority has also seen a massive increase in the amount of discarded paint cans being deposited at Holmestown, with people spending more time on home decorating while they are confined to barracks.
‘We had an articulated truck-load of empty paint cans leave Holmestown last July. We were out the door with them,’ said Peter Byrne.
‘We also had 16 containers with 1,000 litres each of paint which we decanted from the cans. We would never usually have that level of paint. We might have two of those containers a year or 2,000 litres.
‘When people are working, they might do a bit of painting at the weekend but half the country is not working so everyone has been painting,’ said Peter.
‘I spoke to a shop-owner in Enniscorthy who told me the paint companies ran out of cans at one stage there was such a demand for paint and there was also a shortage of timber flooring.
‘Every fence and gate was painted. People were bored and they had money to spend because they weren’t spending it on other things and they had more free time on their hands because they weren’t going to matches or bringing their children to different activities,’ agreed Andrew.
Peter advised people to be careful about the quantity of paint they buy, to avoid having leftover paint which is then discarded, and to consider buying water and not oil-based paint, where appropriate, as the latter is hazardous waste and is expensive to dispose of. Food waste, otherwise known
as compostable material was up by an estimated 40% in Holmestown – in 2018, it was at 57 tonnes and last year, it was 87 tonnes. Whether this was due in part to early lockdown over-purchasing of foodstuffs by panicked shoppers, is not clear.
It was also up significantly in New Ross, from 45 tonnes in 2019 to 59.5 tonnes in 2020 but food waste was noticeably down in Enniscorthy and in Gorey.
Overall, the amount of recyclable materials was up by 25% between 2019 and 2020 at 2,933 tonnes, but the quantity of bulky waste received by Holmestown (the only site to take such waste) was down, with 1,252 tonnes in 2019 and 1,186 tonnes in 2020.
The average number of daily visitors to household recycling centres rose by 20% and by 37% at Holmestown.
‘We have been open all along. We never missed a day. Actually, we missed one day – Leo Varadkar made the first lockdown announcement on a Friday night and we closed on Saturday while waiting for the list of essential services to be published’, said
Peter.