Waste collection - why no competition?

jlang

I had asked this before on the North Dublin board, but no reply. As I'm actually D15, I'll ask here too.

Why is Fingal Co Co our only provider of collection services? In Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, the introduction of competition from Panda doubled the frequency of Green Bin collection and Panda now accept plastic and glass in the Green Bin. Is there no competitor wanting to offer services here or is there a hold up somewhere along the way?

Karoma

It seems that the lack of competition isn't just in our area:
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/private-waste-ban-sparks-fee-hike-fears-1083923.html

Private waste collection companies are to be banned from competing against each other and council bin services for business in the same areas.

Instead the four Dublin local authorities are to award a contract for an entire area to one private operator.

Granted, it's still better than no competition - I cannot answer that one.

PauloMN

Good question, I always wondered why we never had operators like Panda providing a service here.

My mother lives in DLR area and as you say she can put plastics and bottles in her recycle bin. More frequent collection also.

Our green bin is always jammers by collection day, and that's without glass or plastics. SWMBO usually does a run to Coolmine (or Damastown at the moment) twice a month to drop glass and plastics, and batteries etc. off there.

Anyone hear anything else about the brown bin trial they were doing in Fingal (incl. some parts of D15 I think)? Success or not? And are they as smelly as I've heard?

Edit: That article doesn't bode well, I don't like the idea of there being no choice. If 3rd party operators are willing to provide a collection service in an area, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?

Nevyn

Some parts of castleknock , coolmine and clonsilla have the brown bin.
I find it staggering that every household in Galway has 4 bins and yet we only have the two and the green bin needs to be more then once a calendar month.
There is the idea that those are the 'posher' areas where people badgered for them and are 'susposedly' more likely to recycle.

There was also meant to be a roll out of bottle banks in the D15 area with them being at the entrance to each estate but that has not happened.

Fingal also stopped the once a year house hold collection which they used to, providing skips on each road in the run up to the end of october.

As for no competition, well when the county couciles were set up FF rather then reintroduce rates gave over the collection of motor tax and a % of that goes to fund
them. So with all the cars in D15 they must be doing well enough. In exchnage they have to provide water and refuse services.

Zaph

I think Fingal in general is less of an attractive prospect for private refuse contractors because relatively speaking waste collection is cheap. DLRCC charge an annual fee of €80, a €4 charge every time the bin is collected and 25 cents per kilo of waste. Compared to a tag for €7.50 every collection, and bearing in mind a lot of people wouldn't need their bin collected every week, there's a lot less scope to undercut the local authority. I fully expect the charges to go up significantly if a single private operator takes over.

jlang

We have the brown bin. We keep the small one in the kitchen clean and sweet smelling by using paper bags as bin liners and washing/drying it if there's any spillage/leakage. We empty it into the outside one every couple of days anyway. The bigger one outside doesn't get opened too often and I've hosed it out a few times after it's been collected. Also, I try to only cut the grass when it's dry and/or just before the brown bin gets collected so it doesn't sit for too long.

I'd forgotten about the annual fee in DLR, but if that's what it takes to get better services, I change my position to undecided ...