Rethinking waste: Could we make bin collections more environmentally friendly?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Today with David McCullough on RTÉ Radio 1. Now, Panda Waste recently confirmed that it is adding a temporary charge to collections as the company faces rising fuel prices. Customers were notified of an annual increase of €12 plus VAT, roughly 97 cent per month. People before profit criticised the move, saying it's time to have a conversation around establishing a single operator model in Dublin. So would a system that avoids multiple private operators servicing the same streets be more efficient from an environmental and a financial standpoint?
What recent changes have been made to waste collection charges?
I'm joined by Conor Walsh, Secretary of the Irish Waste Management Association, and by Colin O'Byrne of environmental charity Voice Ireland. You're both very welcome. Thanks a million for joining us. Conor, people before profit, and they're not alone in this, other parties I think have said the same, have talked about taking way services back into public ownership the re-municipalisation as it's called isn't that an argument that is a discussion that maybe we should be having
Good morning, David. It's a discussion that has been ongoing for 20 years, I suppose, because there was a court case about this back in 2010. So the argument at the time was that it's a natural monopoly and that would be more efficient. But the High Court came to a different conclusion. It said that it is highly efficient as it is and it doesn't require, it's not a natural monopoly and it doesn't require a monopoly. So You know, what we have at the moment is people have choice and people have good value and people have good quality of service. If you were to change the system, you lose all of that because, firstly, the cost of changing the service is enormous. It's between one and two billion.
What arguments are being made for a single operator model in Dublin?
That would be added on to bills or be added on to taxes. So that's about 40% more. It would be how much? It's between 1 billion and 1.8 billion. And that was decided by a KPMG report. And the reason it's so much is that the state doesn't have anything to tender. So the state doesn't control, doesn't own the bins. It doesn't own the trucks. It doesn't own the transfer stations. And the transfer stations are key to all of this. There's over 100 transfer stations in the country. And if the state doesn't own the transfer stations, it can't tender the service. So it has to acquire a huge amount of infrastructure before it can tender anything. And that's a cost of between one and one point eight billion. And that gets passed on to the public.
OK, Colin, there's two aspects of this. There's the deprivatisation aspect and there's the single provider aspect. But just do you think there's any merit in the idea of taking this service back under public control?
Thanks, David. Yeah, it's a conversation that could be had, but I think, look, we are where we are now after however long the private waste management companies. And I think you could have that conversation, but look, Conor's outlined some of the costs involved there.
OK, so there's another aspect of it, which is that people will see. multiple bin trucks from multiple different companies coming down the same street to collect the rubbish every week. Is there an argument we should be having about that or a discussion we should be having about that?
I think from our point of view, the conversation we should be having there is that if four trucks serving customers on the same street is an unavoidable sort of cost of the current model that we're using, we should look at electrification of the fleet.
How efficient is the current private waste management system?
Now, that doesn't have to be all trucks electrified from right now. But it's what we're seeing in Europe, especially places like Amsterdam, Copenhagen. They've massive amounts of electric bin trucks going around. And these reduce noise, they reduce emissions. And that makes it makes a big difference to your quality of life.
OK, so you can have a better quality of truck, but you're still going to have four trucks coming down the same street. It seems bananas.
I think that's part of the model. If we are pursuing the current model, then we have those trucks.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:36
2
What recent changes have been made to waste collection charges?
0:36–1:49
3
What arguments are being made for a single operator model in Dublin?
1:49–3:31
4
How efficient is the current private waste management system?
3:31–6:59
5
What are the costs associated with changing the waste collection system?
6:59–10:23
6
How does the public perceive the current waste collection services?
10:23–13:10
7
What are the environmental impacts of having multiple waste collection trucks?
13:10–14:16
8
How is electrification being integrated into waste management?
14:16–15:16