DCC take back bin collections

fritzelly

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/dublin-city-council-vote-to-take-charge-of-bin-service-934187.html

Assume when the current contracts end, not much detail
Will subsidies be brought back? Will it stop all the dumping (unlikely)?

loyatemu

fritzelly wrote: »

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/dublin-city-council-vote-to-take-charge-of-bin-service-934187.html

Assume when the current contracts end, not much detail
Will subsidies be brought back? Will it stop all the dumping (unlikely)?

I assume they'll just subcontract it out and take over the billing and scheduling side? They're hardly likely to buy new trucks and hire a load of binmen...

El_Bee

Weird how there's like 3 competing bin companies and prices only went up.

odyssey06

I hope the Council has received good legal advice on this one.

When they 'privatised' collections, they actually sold an asset to the different companies.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/not-so-seamless-transition-as-dublin-city-council-makes-hames-of-greyhound-transfer-1.456979

They may have to compensate the bin companies, not just incur the costs of providing services themselves.

fritzelly

loyatemu wrote: »

I assume they'll just subcontract it out and take over the billing and scheduling side? They're hardly likely to buy new trucks and hire a load of binmen...

Like the NTA?
Greyhound are useless, constantly not bothering to come down my street,

L1011

I'd expect a single operator tender rather than the council hiring staff directly.

Marcusm

L1011 wrote: »

I'd expect a single operator tender rather than the council hiring staff directly.

Exactly, competition for the market rather than competition in the market. Sensibly, the DCC areas should be split up into 4-6 districts and run a price based competition for each. I have found it idiotic that there are three different lorries entering the road each week duplicating routes and wastefully causing congestion.

All that being said, i’m Very happy with City Bin Co’s service and I hope some of their innovations are retained. Fixed pricing with excess charges for excess weight rather than per lift per kg charges. Also, the monthly statement on weights encouraging more progress in recycling.

Gael23

Where is the rubbish tip for Dublin’s waste these days?

imme

Gael23 wrote: »

Where is the rubbish tip for Dublin’s waste these days?

Burn
Baby
Burn

Gael23

imme wrote: »

Burn
Baby
Burn

I didnt know that place was open. Better than having it languish in the ground I guess

L1011

Gael23 wrote: »

I didnt know that place was open. Better than having it languish in the ground I guess

Running for years. The steam plume is quite visible

Also one in Duleek operating currently.

fly_agaric

Gael23 wrote: »

I didnt know that place was open. Better than having it languish in the ground I guess

Not sure what Dublin would be reduced to doing with it if central govt. (Greens?) had got their way and stopped that incinerator from opening!
The mind boggles...

hmmm

So in essence the "won't pay" crowd will have won yet again - because someone has to pay for this, and it'll be the usual group who will shoulder the expense. I like my private bin collection, it is a considerably better service than I used to receive from the council.

fly_agaric

I've found it worse [since privatisation] really (mainly for reasons given by others above).

hmmm wrote: »

So in essence the "won't pay" crowd will have won yet again - because someone has to pay for this, and it'll be the usual group who will shoulder the expense.

I doubt city council would have budget to take control again (which will cost money, maybe quite alot of money??) and also make it free to use.
I expect we will still have to pay (DCC, rather than a company) similar to the situation before the waste collection was handed over to the private companies entirely.
Hopefully the negative experience of a full privatisation will put the PBP/solidarity and Sinn Fein off backing new "anti bin charges" protests and "no pay" campaigns and the like this time around.

uck51js9zml2yt

Gael23 wrote: »

Where is the rubbish tip for Dublin’s waste these days?

Mayo I believe

salmocab

Zelda Billions Hermit wrote: »

Mayo I believe

Environmentally that’s not great, why truck it that far when the road already passes through Meath.

Gael23

salmocab wrote: »

Environmentally that’s not great, why truck it that far when the road already passes through Meath.

Are you suggesting Meath should be turned into one big landfill for Dublin’s detritus?😀

salmocab

Gael23 wrote: »

Are you suggesting Meath should be turned into one big landfill for Dublin’s detritus?😀

Yes

cgcsb

Gael23 wrote: »

Where is the rubbish tip for Dublin’s waste these days?

It's been a while since there's been such a thing.

cgcsb

Privatising such a critical function was a really bad thatcherite decision. As we've seen Greyhound just dump it anywhere and empty all the brown bins into the general waste truck.

Dublin has to be the dirtiest capital in Europe, perhaps with the exception of Lisbon and Athens. It's very embarrassing, even on the main shopping streets you have shops leaving their waste outside, leaving their cardboard to get soaked and become unrecycleable, and that's legalised littering, the illegal type is even worse.

hmmm

fly_agaric wrote: »

Hopefully the negative experience of a full privatisation will put the PBP/solidarity and Sinn Fein off backing new "anti bin charges" protests and "no pay" campaigns and the like this time around.

You're having a laugh, of course they won't be paying - if they're willing to go out of their way to dump their rubbish in a nearby cul de sac, they're not going to be buying and attaching bin tags.

El_Bee

The people who throw their rubbish out onto the street will never pay, I think catering to them will push more people into their way of thinking.

Stephen15

Could be run in a similar to how Go-Ahead recently started running certain Dublin Bus routes. DCC keep the fees collected and pay a private operator to run the bin collection on their behalf this how municipal services like bin collection across the continent are generally run.

fly_agaric

hmmm wrote: »

You're having a laugh, of course they won't be paying - if they're willing to go out of their way to dump their rubbish in a nearby cul de sac, they're not going to be buying and attaching bin tags.

You will always have an element that won't pay, try & cheat the system etc.
I suppose (to restate...) I'm hoping the local politicians will accept "polluter pays" arguments for funding a public waste collection service and not support populist protest against it like they did when charges first came in pre-privatisation.
edit: I imagine you'll have fewer people not paying the council if local politicians aren't screaming that they are being "double taxed", organising protests, blockading bin trucks etc!

cgcsb

I'm shocked how this government doesn't seem interested in taking steps to reduce waste. They have the bottle return in supermarkets across Europe for example, and some of the packaging in supermarkets here is really outrageous. A hollistic approach is needed and every individual needs to have responsibility for their waste.

I've been attempting a zero-waste (low waste) lifestyle lately, My god is it hard. Basically it means not creating waste at all and, where unavoidable, being as responsible as possible with the disposal of waste.
I go to the butcher/fish/cheese monger and get my tupperware filled up with meat fish cheese and eggs. Fallon&Byrne let you fill up containers with grains, rice, porridge etc. so I do that. Shower gel and liquid soap has been replaced by soap bars I get in cardboard containers(which I return to the lady who sells them). I expected all this to be very expensive, but actually I find I'm spending a bit less than I did before, maybe more because I'm not buying so much crap that I don't need. I do accumulate some cardboard/paper waste, which I use to get the log burner going (less wasteful than transporting it to an energy intensive recycling process in another country)

Some things I haven't figured out how to eliminate the waste from: Plastic Milk cartons, they have to go in the green bin, the old system of refilling glass bottles was much greener, which is a big annoyance of mine. Creams, moisturisers, deodorants etc. are a pain

My food waste goes into an electric composter, powered by solar panels, which works intermittently, and I give the compost to people locally who are into flowers, I've no interest.

I bring all my cans and bottles to the bottlebank

I end up with the odd bit of foil, soft (non recycleable) plastic etc. which I stuff into one of the affore mentioned plastic bottles to make an eco-brick (google this), which you can swap for a free pint in the Bernard Shaw.

The up side: I couldn't fill a green bin in 6 months, meaning I'm super smug and self satisfied
The down side: I'm bleeding exhausted and whenever someone comes over with something: a cake or biscuits or something, my first thought is 'feck sake, how am I gonna get rid of that'.

The government has to make it easier for people to make responsible choices, the volume of waste we go through must reduce

El_Bee

cgcsb wrote: »

I'm shocked how this government doesn't seem interested in taking steps to reduce waste. They have the bottle return in supermarkets across Europe for example, and some of the packaging in supermarkets here is really outrageous. A hollistic approach is needed and every individual needs to have responsibility for their waste.

I've been attempting a zero-waste (low waste) lifestyle lately, My god is it hard. Basically it means not creating waste at all and, where unavoidable, being as responsible as possible with the disposal of waste.
I go to the butcher/fish/cheese monger and get my tupperware filled up with meat fish cheese and eggs. Fallon&Byrne let you fill up containers with grains, rice, porridge etc. so I do that. Shower gel and liquid soap has been replaced by soap bars I get in cardboard containers(which I return to the lady who sells them). I expected all this to be very expensive, but actually I find I'm spending a bit less than I did before, maybe more because I'm not buying so much crap that I don't need. I do accumulate some cardboard/paper waste, which I use to get the log burner going (less wasteful than transporting it to an energy intensive recycling process in another country)

Some things I haven't figured out how to eliminate the waste from: Plastic Milk cartons, they have to go in the green bin, the old system of refilling glass bottles was much greener, which is a big annoyance of mine. Creams, moisturisers, deodorants etc. are a pain

My food waste goes into an electric composter, powered by solar panels, which works intermittently, and I give the compost to people locally who are into flowers, I've no interest.

I bring all my cans and bottles to the bottlebank

I end up with the odd bit of foil, soft (non recycleable) plastic etc. which I stuff into one of the affore mentioned plastic bottles to make an eco-brick (google this), which you can swap for a free pint in the Bernard Shaw.

The up side: I couldn't fill a green bin in 6 months, meaning I'm super smug and self satisfied
The down side: I'm bleeding exhausted and whenever someone comes over with something: a cake or biscuits or something, my first thought is 'feck sake, how am I gonna get rid of that'.

The government has to make it easier for people to make responsible choices, the volume of waste we go through must reduce

I applaud your efforts, and it's a good example to set for kids.

Gael23

cgcsb wrote: »

Shower gel and liquid soap has been replaced by soap bars I get in cardboard containers(which I return to the lady who sells them).

What do you think she does with them? Straight into the bin

Ulmus

Well done cg
Aluminium foil
Yes, it’s recyclable! Even the foil you peel off your yoghurt in the morning (rinsed, naturally), and the aluminium trays that house pre-baked foods. There’s a caveat, of course - tiny pieces of foil will fly away from the sorting line or get stuck in places, so make sure to save up your foil into a scrunched up ball so that’s easier for the machines to pick up. Alternatively, tiny pieces of foil, including chocolate foil, can be stuck into an aluminium can that’s squeezed shut.


I put aluminium foil in the can banks.
Government needs to incentivise recycling with deposit-return scheme for plastic bottles and drink cans. It would reduce littering.

odyssey06

Denmark has a deposit scheme. The stuff goes into an incinerator mostly. Helps with littering.

L1011

Gael23 wrote: »

What do you think she does with them? Straight into the bin

If its the type of supplier that specialises in soap bars, they'll be reusing the packaging.

Ger Roe

cgcsb wrote: »

The government has to make it easier for people to make responsible choices, the volume of waste we go through must reduce

Absloutely... I hope that DCC go through with this and end up taking the entire process back into municipal control. We have declared a climate emergency, as a nation, the management of our waste has to be taken back in to national control, a super authority needs to be formed to manage the waste process. The current piecemeal approach by individual councils, with different processes and facilities operating in different council areas, needs to stop.

The sell off of the waste management process and the development of an 'industry' was a cop out that should never have happened. It was and should now return to being an environmental and social service priority and not a profit orientated opportunity. I don't elect private waste companies and so am powerless to influence them as a result, the responsibility lies with our elected reps and their agencies, let them take control back and we can make them directly accountable.

I never understood how the private sector operation was going to work long term, surely if we manage our waste more effectively and reduce the amount going to landfill, recycle, or incinerator, then the 'industry' will be unsustainable in the long run and many of the companies awarded licences will go out of business?

The whole sector is an expensive and grossly inefficient joke. Time for a radical re-think. DCC thinking of taking services back is a move in the right direction, but far more has to be done - deal with the 'emergency' as a national issue.

fly_agaric

cgcsb wrote: »

I've been attempting a zero-waste (low waste) lifestyle lately, My god is it hard. Basically it means not creating waste at all and, where unavoidable, being as responsible as possible with the disposal of waste...

Fair play on the effort.

cgcsb wrote: »

The government has to make it easier for people to make responsible choices, the volume of waste we go through must reduce. They have the bottle return in supermarkets across Europe for example, and some of the packaging in supermarkets here is really outrageous.

Agree government could do more (and bring in ideas that might work to reduce waste from elsewhere). I think there is a problem with trying to tackle it at a more fundamental level.

It's ultimately large multinational companies who provide the goods and run the systems with all of this packaging and associated waste that is generated by the end customers (and at different points in the supply chain).

Individual consumers can pressure them from the bottom up by trying to do what you are doing (I think that is unlikely to happen in large enough numbers) or they can be forced to change their operations to reduce waste by regulations/laws.

Unfortunately these are companies with the scale and wealth of entire nation states. There are (IMO) very few governments that can actually force them to change their business and I don't think Ireland is really one of them. Maybe something would have to happen at the EU level?

cgcsb

Gael23 wrote: »

What do you think she does with them? Straight into the bin

She puts more soap into them and sells them to other people obviously. Why would she was a perfectly good piece of packaging, it's saving her money, she'd have to buy more otherwise

El_Bee

We could really, really learn a lot from Japan:

Tony EH

Can't come quick enough as far as I'm concerned. Should never have been hocked out to private vultures in the first place.

Tony EH

hmmm wrote: »

So in essence the "won't pay" crowd will have won yet again - because someone has to pay for this, and it'll be the usual group who will shoulder the expense. I like my private bin collection, it is a considerably better service than I used to receive from the council.

There is no "won't pay" crowd.

What will happen, probably, is that the council will revert back to what it was just before bin collection was chucked out to the likes of Greyhound. In that people will still have to pay individually for things like bin tags and whatnot. That worked perfectly well and was reasonably priced too.

But we won't have to deal with cowboys who keep their taxes offshore like the Buckleys and are only interested in making a quick buck.

Bottom line is you just cannot trust private companies with essential public services like this, because they're only interested in the profit they can make off of it.

The waste privatisation project has been such an absolute disaster, so much so that the DCC are actually thinking of taking it back. Pretty much an admission that the whole nonsense has failed.

caff

The glass bottle vs paper carton isn't clear cut it depends on the distance to the recycling centre as glass weighs more and requires high heat to disinfect

odyssey06

Tony EH wrote: »

There is no
What will happen, probably, is that the council will revert back to what it was just before bin collection was chucked out to the likes of Greyhound. In that people will still have to pay individually for things like bin tags and whatnot. That worked perfectly well and was reasonably priced too..

That wasnt the systen that was in place.

It didnt work perfectly well as the millions owed to DCC by residents attests and the cost of providing waivers to low income households.
They were the reasons DCC got out of it and havent gone away.
Doesnt mean DCC shouldnt take it back but its fantasy to suggest all was perfect.

El_Bee

Tony EH wrote: »

There is no "won't pay" crowd.

So the bin bags that appear in the green in my estate and all over the place, and the rampant fly tipping, just figments of our imagination?

Spanish Eyes

There is another way of looking at this, and forgive me if it sounds inflammatory.

EVERYONE should pay Property Tax, it happens all over Europe. Why renters are exempt bothers me, they get the same services as those who have to pay for it.

And LPT charge should include rubbish collection, just as it does elsewhere. But no, we are different and still cannot justify it.

Tony EH

odyssey06 wrote: »

That wasnt the systen that was in place.

I recall that it was, because that's what we used before it was privatised. We have no space for wheelie bins, so we had to get tags for black bags and the recycling bags were free. When collection was tossed out to Greyhound, that all went to hell and everything just started going up. The govt even had to stop bin companies from hiking their prices by 50% a few years ago.

odyssey06 wrote: »

It didnt work perfectly well

Yes, it did. Much better than the joke Greyhound turned out to be. That's for sure. Greyhound have been a farce from beginning to end. Between arson attacks, strikes, irregular collection times and just not bothering their arses to even pick bins up, everyone ended up worse off where I live.

Tony EH

El_Bee wrote: »

So the bin bags that appear in the green in my estate and all over the place, and the rampant fly tipping, just figments of our imagination?

Scumbags are gonna scumbag.

But they weren't the ones who were against privatisation anyway. They didn't care either way, whether it was collected by the council or cowboys. There was illegal dumping even when the council were in charge of bins by the very same types. Privatising bins wasn't going to change that. It was only going to make it worse.

However, the folk who protested the privatisation of Dublin's waste collection did so, because they suspected quite rightly, just how things would go.

odyssey06

Tony EH wrote: »

I recall that it was, because that's what we used before it was privatised. We have no space for wheelie bins, so we had to get tags for black bags and the recycling bags were free. When collection was tossed out to Greyhound, that all went to hell and everything just started going up. The govt even had to stop bin companies from hiking their prices by 50% a few years ago.

Yes, it did. Much better than the joke Greyhound turned out to be. That's for sure. Greyhound have been a farce from beginning to end. Between arson attacks, strikes, irregular collection times and just not bothering their arses to even pick bins up, everyone ended up worse off where I live.

That was not the system in place across DCC as a whole. Wheelie bins came in long before privatisation for most areas.
Thats why there are so many Dublin corporation wheelie bins across DCC areas today.

Explain the operation of the waiver scheme when DCC collected the bins and how DCC was owed more than 5 million in charges by residents.
DCC got out of it for a reason. They screwed it up big time but the pressures that drove that decision are still there.

Tony EH

odyssey06 wrote: »

That was not the system in place across DCC as a whole. Wheelie bins came in long before privatisation for most areas..

I didn't say there were no wheelie bins.

Sleeper12

odyssey06 wrote:

I hope the Council has received good legal advice on this one.

The city council can vote all they want. Its the city manager signs off on things like this. Not a chance that DCC will take over bin collection in Dublin.

odyssey06

Sleeper12 wrote: »

The city council can vote all they want. Its the city manager signs off on things like this. Not a chance that DCC will take over bin collection in Dublin.

Yes I thought that too as iirc last time the city manager decided it and councillors could not stop it with a vote - except by voting down the entire budget.

hgfj

Tony EH wrote: »

... Bottom line is you just cannot trust private companies with essential public services like this, because they're only interested in the profit they can make off of it...

Reminds me of a documentary I saw years ago by Micheal Moore. I can't remember the name of it but there was a bit in it where Moore said he didn't bother with recycling anymore. I think it was in his hometown of Flint. Reason being that he followed his local bin collection truck one day and found that none of it was being recycled. Everything was going to the same place. Everything ended up in a landfill, and he just thought what's the effing point.

Tony EH

^

Probably 'Roger & Me'. Haven't seen it though.

cgcsb

caff wrote: »

The glass bottle vs paper carton isn't clear cut it depends on the distance to the recycling centre as glass weighs more and requires high heat to disinfect

Are you talking about tetra pak vs glass bottles?

There is no comparison. To recycle tetra pak, it is shipped to the UK where the lids are physically separated and sent to the far East to be recycled. The rest of the carton is shredded and boiled in water which separates he paper fraction from the plastic and aluminium layers. The paper fraction is reformed into paper and sold on and the plastic aluminium mush is marketed as a polymer to building contractors. This is a high energy process, much more difficult than steaming glass bottles and reusing them.

ted1

El_Bee wrote: »

Weird how there's like 3 competing bin companies and prices only went up.

More overheads. Before the trucks went out and collected bins from every house. Know they are doing the same distance but collecting less bins so the fuel costs is higher for each bin collected also staff costs are higher as there’s more office staff, sales staff, finance staff , insurance, bin men, basically everything is being triplicated driving up costs.

fritzelly

ted1 wrote: »

More overheads. Before the trucks went out and collected bins from every house. Know they are doing the same distance but collecting less bins so the fuel costs is higher for each bin collected also staff costs are higher as there’s more office staff, sales staff, finance staff , insurance, bin men, basically everything is being triplicated driving up costs.

And the dumps kept increasing their prices, surprise surprise