Bintifada (2 Viewers)

[pete]

in future i'll only take my news from the newspaper of record:

Thousands of residents in Fingal are facing a €110 annual bill for bin collection. The fixed charge will be introduced next year in addition to the pay-as-you-use tag system that is in place, a Fingal County Council spokeswoman said.
She said the fixed charge is being introduced to roll out the brown bin collection - for kitchen and organic waste - countywide and expand the green bin recycling service.
"We've been among the cheapest in the country. The council has been subsidising waste collection, but to provide a better level of service we have to introduce charges," the spokeswoman added.
Director of environment at the council PJ Howell, said: "We must operate a refuse and recycling service that pays for itself, and at the moment it is heavily subsidised."
He also said the "fair and user-friendly" charges would cover waste-collection costs that are forecast to leap from €7.3 million to €11 million next year with the proposed expanded service.
The proposal for the fixed charge will be presented to councillors and voted on next week.
No changes are proposed for the current pay-as-you-use tag system, which allows residents to buy tags in shops and garages for black bin bag waste. The tag prices are not applied to green bins and will not be applied to brown bins.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/1120/breaking31.htm

My brown bin currently goes out about once every three months; the green bin every two months.

I guess I'll just need to be throwing out more stuff in general if I want value for money next year.

 

[pete]

this was flagged by joe higgins last month

When the bin tax was introduced by Local Authorities in Dublin and Limerick around 2002, The Socialist Party warned that, if allowed to be implemented, the price would rapidly increase and there would also be a move toward privatisation of the household waste collection service. Unfortunately on both counts we are being proved correct.

Waste collection charges have risen substantially. In parts of Dublin private operators have opportunistically used this to move in and take householders away from the local Council collection service. The collection service has been completely privatised in Limerick.

Now the four local authorities in the Dublin region, accounting for about one third of the population of the State, are making proposals which would further prepare the ground for the wholesale privatisation of the waste service. They are proposing to change the Waste Plan for the Dublin Region 2005-2010 to give themselves the right to invite "competitive tendering" from private companies for the collection of waste.

They are also extending the power to charge for recycling and composting. The following paragraph is proposed;"Therefore householders are obliged to pay not just for the cost of collection and disposal of waste in their Grey Bins, but for other services that are provided or arranged for by the Local Authority in respect of waste presented in Green Bins (and Brown Bins from 2006) along with waste presented to Recycling Centres and Bring Banks."

Quite clearly the ground is being prepared here for a wide-ranging attack on the pockets of working people. Any move toward privatisation should be strongly resisted. Community groups and individuals can make submissions up to 18 November 2007 by email to [email protected] or by letter to The Manager, Environment Department, Dublin City Council, Dublin 8.

Coincidentally the reintroduction of water charges for householders is also being raised by the employers' organization, IBEC. Naturally, if they were successful in this they would follow up with pressure for the privatisation of any profitable parts of the water supply service.

A major campaign of opposition to water charges which saw tens of thousands of householders refusing to pay, forced the Fine Gael/Labour Government to abolish them in December 1996. Both business and the government should be under no illusion. Any attempt to bring back the hated water charges would reignite a huge movement of opposition in the form of a mass boycott of the charge.

 

[pete]

and here's what clare daly had to say about it today

Swords based Socialist Party Councillor Clare Daly Chairperson of the Fingal Anti-Bin Tax Campaign has slammed the proposed introduction of a new flat charge for environmental services, linked to the extension of the green and brown bin service.

* FINGAL ANTI-BIN TAX CAMPAIGN WILL VIGOROUSLY OPPOSE THIS DOUBLE TAX
Councillor Daly said, “After six years of propaganda from Fingal County Council to establish the tag system for the collection of the grey bin, they have now dropped the sham environmental cover and moved to charging directly for recycling facilities also.

All of the statements from Council management and the pro-bin tax councillors when the charge was originally brought in, that it wouldn’t rise, that it had nothing to do with generating extra taxation but was about encouraging people to recycle, have now been exposed for what they were – TOTAL AND UTTER BLATANT FALSEHOODS.”

She continued, “The Fingal Anti-Bin Tax Campaign has been absolutely vindicated in the stand that we took opposing that charge. Not only has the charge increased massively every year, but now the Council’s own catch-phrase has been shown up as a con. Residents will remember the Council’s slogan “You only pay for what you throw away”, and all the nonsense that if people recycled the charge would be negligible. The new proposals would mean an average household based on leaving out the grey bin fortnightly, as having paying a bin tax of €300 per annum. This is an absolute disgrace.”

Councillor Daly said, “The bin tax has always been about generating extra revenue for the Council against the backdrop of falling percentages of government support. Tens of thousands of new taxpayers have moved into Fingal County Council over the past 5-10 years, yet the amount of funding from central government equates to only 13%.

The introduction of a bin tax has made waste big business the private operators are earning millions from the present situation while PAYE taxpayers and pensioners are levied on the double. Meanwhile, while recycling has increased, the actual amount of waste per person has also increased during the lifetime of the charge.”

She concluded, “This debacle will only be halted through the elimination of a direct charge and the reinstatement of waste collection as a public service. We will vigorously oppose the introduction of this new tax by every means possible, starting at the Council Estimates meeting next Tuesday.

 

[broken arm]

wait for the water the police tax. water being least fair of the lot.

 

[It Will Never Last]

Somebody posted on boards.ie:

I was talking to a Councillor today and explaining that I only put the bin out every 8 to 10 weeks. He replied that it was because of people like me that they are forced to introduce this charge. i.e. they are not making any money from me.

The daw brains.

If youse all stopped recycling none of this would have happened. I blame the shifty looking Chinese.

 

[broken arm]

If youse all stopped recycling none of this would have happened. I blame the shifty looking Chinese.

this is kind of related to my point about the waste management industry. they require waste to be produced not reduced in the same way for an incinerator to work it needs a steady and constant stream of waste to maintain efficiency.

no consideration of where the resources are coming from in the first place. and what we will replace them with in the future.

did you know that the average desktop PC requires over 1.5 tonnes of raw material to be extracted for all it's materials and components. Granted this figure is improving all the time but still it's worth considering....

 

[broken arm]

Incineration 'undermines' waste policy
28/11/2007 09:23:09

Incineration 'undermines' waste policy

Recent decisions on incineration have undermined sustainable waste policy, Minister for the Environment John Gormley said at the opening of the National Waste Summit in Dublin yesterday.

Mr Gormley was a vocal opponent of Dublin City Council's plan to locate a waste incinerator at Poolbeg, but last week An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission to the facility. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) then issued a draft licence to the council to operate the facility.

This will be Dublin's first municipal waste incinerator and will have a capacity of 600,000 tonnes. Mr Gormley expressed disappointment at the approval of the plant last week. Yesterday he said an incinerator with such a capacity was "not sustainable".

He said this capacity was large enough to serve the entire country. "In fact, recent figures from my department suggest that, with a developed mechanical biological treatment system, the quantity of residual waste requiring disposal other than landfill would be reduced to some 400,000 tonnes by 2016."

Mr Gormley said he believed an incinerator as large as the Poolbeg facility "was a disincentive to recycling". "Because of the 'put and pay' clause, the local authorities will have to keep feeding it or pay a substantial financial penalty," he said. He said many regional waste management plans were over-reliant on incineration "and there is a need to focus on the alternatives". Mr Gormley said he hoped an international review of waste management policy, commissioned by his Department, would be under way by early next year.

Last week, a steering group held its first meeting to agree terms of reference. The review will be carried out by independent consultants and will be "one of the most comprehensive pieces of research ever on waste in Ireland," Mr Gormley said. The review will look at ways of reducing waste levels, promoting alternative technologies and improving recycling rates.

Mr Gormley told waste industry representatives that it would be an "enormous challenge" to reduce, or find alternative treatment for at least 700,000 tonnes of waste by the end of 2010.

The National Waste Summit will continue today, with a debate on ways of reducing waste. Austria's success in establishing composting will be examined. Up to 80 per cent of Austrians separate their biowaste, mainly household kitchen waste, at source. Some 600 composting plants treat the biowaste of 8.7 million inhabitants.

The conference will also hear about the success of the web-based initiative run by the four local authorities in Dublin. The website www.dublinwaste.ie allows people to give away unwanted goods for free instead of dumping them. In its first year of operation, the equivalent of 70 household skips containing more than 5,000 items were reused through the website.

Furniture is the most exchanged item, followed by household appliances and garden and outdoor items.

etc

 

[pete]

bump

who could have foreseen this shit happening?

Trashing the concept of a public service

 

[niallmc]

Great read, such a shame we lost that debate over the bins. Those Celtic Tiger days when we moved from a society to an economy!!
Wonder when Water will be privatised?

 

[therealjohnny]

Ireland did get my brilliantly named band Bincharge out of it all

The name is best enjoyed without hearing what we sounded like

 

[nooleen]

i was expecting this thread to be about an uprising of bints

 

[pete]

Oh well. Another completely unpredictable development.

Miriam Lord: Beware the march of advancing wheelie bins

 

[pete]

Independent TD says waste firms operating ‘cartel’

 

[niallmc]

Another fine mess

 

[pete]

We got our statement yesterday. Last November we had a brown bin emptied that weighed 0Kg. The next one was 120kg. The rest were all 8 or 9Kg. Not filling me with confidence.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Clearly a swindle.


Are these mandatory though?
i.e. do you have to have a bin service?

Could you theoretically compost in your garden (if you had one) and repurpose recyclables and so on?

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Clearly a swindle.


Are these mandatory though?
i.e. do you have to have a bin service?

Could you theoretically compost in your garden (if you had one) and repurpose recyclables and so on?

No. We compost and recycling is still 'free' (there's a standing charge as far as I know). Not sure what can be done with general waste though apart from firing it in the bin. Recycling bin maybe.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

No. We compost and recycling is still 'free' (there's a standing charge as far as I know). Not sure what can be done with general waste though apart from firing it in the bin. Recycling bin maybe.

Depends what you have for general waste.
If you don't buy stuff in packets, then you might not have a lot.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Most packaging can be recycled too. I'm just trying to think what goes in our general waste... some plastics, food, not sure there's much else, our recycle bin fills up a lot quicker.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Well, you can compost any food that's not animal, right?

The rest you can throw in here.

Garbage Disposals -  The Home Depot
Do they have those in Ireland?


Does no harm to be aware of what you're buying when it comes to packaging. And sometimes asking in the shop if they'll keep it.