Pay by weight refuse...

Wertz

Well in light of the stuff in the news today about pay by weight refuse collections saving families an average of €100 p/a, I thought I'd make a thread.

Personally I'm tired listening to Dermot Gavin and yer wan from Give my head peace, banging on about pay by weight services.
It seems that only 14 collection services nationally are operating this sytem.
My own local service (Oxigen Waste Services) is lagging sorely behind, have been promising to take the system in for at least 2 years now and don't seem to be doing much about it.
Meanwhile they are quite happy to charge €67 a quarter for a half size wheely bin (weekly collection) and a green bin (once a month).
Now since our house barely even fills the half size bin every week, due to a system of recycling involving bottle banks, the green bin and trips to the local recycling centre, I feel I am being very hard done by....I have nothing against paying for my landfill footprint but I fail to see why my fixed charge should go to subsidise large waste producing households.

Dick Roche was quick enough to point out the good points about the pay by weight system, but seems a bit toothless when it comes to actually forcing refuse collection companies into adopting the system.

So is your collection pay by weight? If so do you think it's a fair system?
...and what in your opinion can be done to fiorce these private companies into adopting what would most likely be a loss making policy.

Do-more

Here in Mullingar I pay €8 a time to have our general waste bin emptied. Normally put it out every 3rd or 4th week. It's not weighed so I normally compact it as much as possible to get good value for money!;)

The Blue bin for recycleables costs €4 a time to empty and we put it out every 4th week or so.

They have just started a pilot scheme for organic waste, the bin was delivered to us last Friday so we are just getting into the swing of using it. It costs €4 to empty, but is only the smaller 140 litre bin. I have doubts if the scheme will be a sucess as €/volume wise there is no saving in using the brown bin against the General waste bin so I can't see there being great uptake on the service. At the end of the day it's really only of use for cooked meat waste etc. that can't go on the compost heap at the end of the garden.

What I'd really like to see, is them accepting general plastic packaging in the blue bin!

Wertz

Do-more wrote:

What I'd really like to see, is them accepting general plastic packaging in the blue bin!

Yup, I have the exact same qualm with the green recyclable bin over here.
Still have to travel 5 odd miles to the recycling centre with a car boot full of plastic milk cartons, soft drink bottles and various food packaging.

I don't know if there's some reason why they don't take PETs in the recycle bin...

Do-more

Wertz wrote:

Still have to travel 5 odd miles to the recycling centre with a car boot full of plastic milk cartons, soft drink bottles and various food packaging.

To clarify, they do accept PET bottles, plastic milk containers and tetra-paks in the Blue bin here, I meant the more general plastic foil wraps, trays etc.

Guess I not so badly off as I thought!

damiand

I take it both of you (Wertz and do-more) dont have kids. I have a small bin as I recycle as much as possible but with two young kids my bin is full of nappies when it is collected every two weeks. At that I have to walk the rubbish into the bin. I have tried the compostable nappies and all that stuff... not great. There is no physical way I can reduce the size of my bin any further without going to cloth nappies.

This brings me to my second point. A wet nappy can weigh up to 800 grammes in the morning. multiply by two (kids) by three nappies per day by two weeks .... getting very heavy... Were the pay by weight to come in I would have to pay a fortune. The way i look at it is in a few years the nappies willl be finished and then my bin will be light.

Pay by bin size strikes me as being fair.

Pay per bin also strikes me as fair.

One word of warning about pay by weight is that it will increase the overall cost of rubbish collection. Each council will have to employ staff to answer queries from the general public . Wexford county Council abandoned plans to introduce pay by weight as it would have added millions to the cost of rubbish collection.

SeanW

I think pay-by-weight/volume is the best, because if you paid per collection, and you didn't throw a lot of stuff out, you'd have to store potentially unhygienic garbage at home for up to a month or so. Pickups should be frequent IMO.

Oh and BTW I also can't recycle plastics here >_< why can't they get this right?

Do-more

damiand wrote:

I take it, you don't have kids.

Just the one 2 year old at the mo, hopefully he is potty trained by the time No. 2 is due in December! Probably 75% of what goes in our general waste is nappies (an environmental disaster just on their own!) Would be more, but he's in a creche during the day.

With the introduction of the brown bin, the collection cycle for the general waste has gone from weekly to two weekly. This will mean that we will probably have to put out the bin every two weeks now, where we could have stretched to three or four weeks before now we won't be able to risk having a full bin after three weeks and not be able to get it emptied. Only solution, would be to have 2 general waste bins! But I think the current collection of Green, Blue and Brown bin is quite enough thank you!

Wertz

With no disrespect intended toward those with young children (or kids of any age), I'm not in receipt of tax credits for children or the monthly children's allowance...I don't wish to sound mean but that's the bottom line for me and many other childless people out there.

Personally I don't see why I should have to pay a fixed quarterly rate regardless of how often I put the landfill bin out or how much is in it....although I'll agree that the systems to run pay by weight successfully may ned a capital investment that could increase actual costs.
From what I'm reading here, seems that it's swings and roundabouts depending on where you reside and I may not be doing so badly overall.

the_syco

Living in North Kildare @ the mo. No small kids. We used to put the bin out every week, now it goes out every two weeks (or three), depending on how full it is. The Recycling Bin, when it's collected (once a month) is usually completely full to the brim, with newspapers, beer cans, bottles, etc.

Here we do the Tag thing. ie: we buy a tag, and put it on the bin everytime its collected. Aunty down in Limerick has a similair thing, and she only puts it out once a month (instead of the usual once a week in the old system).

Byrno

the_syco wrote:

Living in North Kildare @ the mo. No small kids. We used to put the bin out every week, now it goes out every two weeks (or three), depending on how full it is. The Recycling Bin, when it's collected (once a month) is usually completely full to the brim, with newspapers, beer cans, bottles, etc.

Yeah at home in Kildare it's the same deal and pretty much as frequent as yourself when both my sister and myself are at home. Otherwise it's less frequent with the normal bin. The tag thing seems a pretty good idea as it rewards those who use it less. The recycling bin is annoying though. When we're all at home it generally gets full after a couple of weeks and it's a case of really trying to pack things in, sometimes even storing the recycables in the garage until the bin is emptied.

Up in Dublin though it's a different story. In our apartment block they got rid of the recycling bin and now we just have the ordinary bins which we have to throw everything into. And as we're in an apartment in the city centre it's not practical to store recycables or bring them anywhere to be recycled.

Dilbert75

When we only had one child, we mostly filled a 240 litre bin every week. Once they brought in doorstep recycling, we filled a 140 litre bin every two weeks and we more than fill (i.e. have to put out bags as well) the 240l green bin on the alternate weeks.

Wexford County Council used this area as their trial on pay by weight - and, as already stated, they found it would cost more to run than pay by bin size, which is in place at the moment. Despite having a large proportion of nappies in our bin (only about a year or so left, please God), I still agree with the principle of Polluter Pays Proportionally. Just can't see it happening here anytime soon.

damiand

I think there is no question of all agreeing to the polluter pays principle. The question is though what is more fair or the best option,
1. pay by weight, or,
2. pay by volume.

As stated I have two kids in nappies and a wet nappy weighs about 800 grammes in the morning. I have a 140 L bin which is collected every second week and alternate weeks a 240 L bin for recyclables which is always full.

I like the idea of paying by volume and not by weight. Pay by weight is not an option in Wexford due to the undue expense in administrating the pay by weight system.