Nine ways to put a lid on rising bin charges
As flat fees are set to be phased out, here’s nine ways to reduce your waste bill
We produce 4.3 tonnes of waste per person per year. Spread out, that would cover an acre. Over a lifetime, it would submerge a sizeable farm.
Before we die, we’ll go through 3,796 nappies, 15 computers, five fridges, 10 tellies, 389 tubes of toothpaste, 272 sticks of deodorant and eight tonnes of wasted food – to name just a few waste items.
Separated, all that could be recycled or decompose naturally into compost. But mixed together it remains an unholy mess long after we’re gone. That’s the legacy every consumer leaves behind – a farm-sized smelly trash-pile.
We’ve got a lot better at recycling. We recycle 57% of household waste now, compared to just 9% a decade ago. And 87% of packaging is now recycled here.
But we’re also generating more waste than ever before – more than every other developed country in the world, bar two – New Zealand and Kuwait – according to a World Bank survey. And we’re rapidly running out of landfill sites in which to dump the waste.
Twice last year we were ‘within hours of a situation where no bins would be collected as there was no landfill to bring it to’, Environment Minister Denis Naughten wrote in a newspaper article as he justified the new bin charge regime he introduced this week. ‘Emergency powers had to be invoked to ensure that waste continued to be collected.’
Pay-by-weight bin charges were due to be made compulsory last July but the announcement provoked a backlash over fears of rising prices.
Running scared of provoking another water charges debacle, the minister caved in after a few days and agreed to suspend pay-by-weight until this July. On Wednesday, Mr Naughten picked up the can that had been kicked far down the road last year, announcing the new charges regime would kick in ‘later this summer’. By
Thursday, that date had been rolled back to ‘September’, due to the process involved in informing local authorities.
He promised to phase out flat fees over a 12-month period.
There will also be a mandatory roll-out of organic or brown bins to communities with populations of more than 500.
And people with lifelong or long-term medical incontinence will get €75 per person per year to help meet any extra costs for non-recyclable waste.
Mr Naughten doesn’t propose price controls, so the issue of potentially higher waste fees remains – although he did promise that his department will ‘monitor the waste collection market carefully’.
Maybe Mr Naughten could show ‘new politics’ can work by taking on board two sensible Fianna Fáil and Green Party suggestions. The first is to establish a waste industry regulator. And we do need to keep an eye on this murky business, where most firms avoid scrutiny by being based offshore.
It would be hardly surprising if they tried to sneak in a price hike – as was attempted last year in the first attempt to introduce pay-by-weight. Minister Naughten said householders should shop around for the best price.
But Fianna Fáil and the Greens had a better idea. Instead of having fleets of bin lorries from several companies trundling around our estates, why not tender for a single contractor who gives the best service at the best prices? Until bin companies react, we don’t yet know how the new moves will impact on charges. But it seems those who don’t recycle properly may have to pay more, while those that do should pay less.
Pay-by-weight is the only way to go if we want to encourage less waste and more recycling and avoid EU sanctions for not taking care of our waste properly.
Households with pay-byweight bin charges put 800kg a year in bins compared to 1,294kg in pay-per-lift areas – a difference of 38%.
Pay-by-weight households were also found to recycle 50% more waste compared to those who pay through other systems.
The good news is that under the new system, we can save lots of money by recycling.
Households can divert 300kg of waste every year from the costly black bin to the cheaper brown bin – or the garden compost pile which is completely free. In fact, speaking from personal experience, the black bin for general unrecycled waste should be a last resort and hardly needs to be used at all. Here are some tips: We throw away €700 worth of food every year. Reducing waste will save money on both shopping bills and waste disposal. So, read use-by dates and rotate food in your fridge so the fresher stuff goes to the back. If in doubt, stick those chicken breasts in the freezer. When you go shopping, make a list – and stick to it! And don’t shop on an empty stomach. Hungry people buy more food even if they don’t need it. You can’t pay for waste disposal if you don’t accumulate it in the first place. There’s way too much packaging on everything we buy. So, leave it in the shop whenever you can and let the companies responsible for the proliferation pay to get rid of it. Wipes are handy for cleaning floors and surfaces, but you have to throw them away afterwards. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned mop or cloth? And don’t throw out dirty dishcloths – put them in the washing machine. Also swap shower gel for a bar of soap. It’s much cheaper, lasts way longer – and there’s nothing to throw away. Bringing your lunch to work (in a lunch box) reduces packaging and saves around €35 a week on pricey pesto-and-parma ham ciabattas. Meat, tea bags and food-soiled paper can go in a brown bin – but not nappies or ashes. And definitely not dead animals which, as Minister Naughten revealed this week, have been found in both green and brown bins. Consider the people who have to sort through your mess in recycling centres! See brownbinrescue.ie for tips. If you live in an apartment you won’t get a brown bin for composting. But you can compost in your kitchen on a small scale with small compost bins – which has been common practice in India, for example, for thousands of years. You can also ‘donate’ composted waste to local allotments or collection centres. Seeing smelly waste gradually change into fertile garden soil is a great way to learn or teach your kids how nature takes care of waste disposal. Slightly different rules apply here compared to the brown bin. The main one is that no meat is allowed or you’ll attract rats. Visit cleanireland.ie. Even if you just grow herbs in a pot in the kitchen, you’ll save money and have handy, everfresh and organic produce at your fingertips. Or forage in your local hedgerow in the autumn. Why buy pricey packaged blueberries when we’ve free blackberries growing all over the place?