Ireland's waste policy is living up to its name

ANTI-bin charge protests are growing and more than 50,000 households in Dublin are now without a collection service.

Fifteen protestors have already been jailed, many more are due before the High Court and there is a Garda investigation under way surrounding injuries sustained by one protestor.

On the streets the uncollected refuse continues to build up, fuelling health and public safety fears.

But while all our energies are focused on the bin charge, we ignore the fact that all that waste has to go somewhere.

Most household waste is currently dumped in landfill sites, a method that is costing an average of EUR200 per tonne in the Dublin region.

Bin charges vary around the country. Barna Waste, a private waste collector in Galway, collects from 22,000 households and charges EUR350 per year. That gives the firm a gross income of EUR7.7million. A tidy sum for rubbish.

The firm then exports the used plastics to China and India, the newspapers to England and the milk cartons go to Scotland.

Dublin City Council charges EUR154 for the large black bin and EUR90 for the smaller version, including the cost of collection and disposal. But, as the cost of disposal, government-backed incineration and landfilling increase, the bin charge is going to keep rising.

This means that the householder is paying for Ireland's landfill crisis.

The solution is simple. Stop sending waste to landfills or incinerators - those disposal methods are expensive and, yes, wasteful.

If our aim is to keep bin charges small then separating waste at home can help.

Separated waste is not waste anymore, it is the raw material for recycling companies.

Waste is created only when we mix everything together. Once it's mixed, there is no option but to landfill or incinerate.

Bin charges could then be administered by weight using a system called PAYT (pay as you throw) which works by only charging for the contents of the unseparated black bin.

With the introduction of this system, it is in every householder's interest to separate everything, as we are only charged for what cannot be made available for recycling.

Every householder will manage what goes into the bin and receive a bill, just like we do a telephone or an electricity bill. The key to this system is that it is possible to achieve a zero charge and even receive credits for the raw materials made available for recyclers.

Research has shown that most householders think this system of reducing bin charges is fair - but government has a vital role to play.

Environment Minister Martin Cullen has to help create markets for recycled materials. He can easily do this by reducing the VAT on recycled products and insisting that a percentage of all home- produced products use recycled material in their manufacture.

Without such help, this system will fail.

The reason we are in this current mess is partly because Mr Cullen is giving priority to incineration - EUR1m of the plastic bag tax to build an incinerator for the Dublin region compared to just EUR27,000 for a composting facility for Ballinasloe in Galway.

Incinerators and landfill kill the cash value of household waste which householders could use to reduce bin charges.

Landfill disposal of kitchen waste also creates problems such as methane gas emissions, which contribute to climate change, odours and a toxic substance called leachate.

Under EU law, we must stop putting this material into landfills. One solution is to buy a composter and put it in the garden, but ultimately we need a separate collection system for kitchen waste.

By diverting this waste away from landfill, we automatically solve a third of the national waste problem.

Ireland is currently near the bottom of the European recycling league table. Only around 5.6 per cent of Ireland's annual 1.5 million tonnes of household waste is recycled.

This compares badly with neighbours such as Switzerland (52 per cent), Austria (49.7 per cent), Germany (48 per cent) and the Netherlands (46 per cent).

The Environmental Protection Agency has warned that space for burying rubbish in the Dublin region could run out within three years.

But growing waste, unambitious recycling targets and rapidly filling landfill sites are leading more local authorities to push for waste incineration - in spite of mounting concerns by community groups over the risk to health and the environment.

Once built, incinerators keep destroying waste which could otherwise be recycled. Around 80 per cent of household waste could be either recycled or composted, dramatically reducing the need for landfill and bin charges.

The new TV ad tells us that "Ireland is running out of landfill sites".

Well we may also run out of prison spaces if Mr Martin Cullen doesn't act quickly and put in place a fair system of waste charges for everyone.

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