Today with David McCullagh
Rethinking waste: Could we make bin collections more environmentally friendly?
12 May 2026
Chapter 1: 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?
Chapter 2: 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.
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Chapter 3: 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.
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Chapter 4: 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.
But should we be pursuing the current model?
Well, look, it depends on what you're looking for. Look, if you are the customer, I suppose you're looking for your options. You're looking for any amount of different companies to deal with. If we go with a model whereby, say, it's just one operator per postcode, in theory, that sounds great. You just have the smaller amount or less amount of trucks going up and down.
But then are the consumers going to be happy with less choice? I mean, that's...
OK, Conor, I mean, this argument about the competition, OK, it's all well and good that you can choose between the different operators that provide service on your street. But the other way of doing it, the way that it's done in most European countries, is that companies tender for a particular area and then you only have one bin lorry coming down the street every week.
Surely that's more efficient.
No, it's not more efficient. It has evolved that way in those countries because the state has controlled the transfer stations and the state has controlled the big infrastructure. In Ireland, we've spent billions on infrastructure and it's all private sector at this point.
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Chapter 5: What are the costs associated with changing the waste collection system?
OK, so you're going to lose 28 companies immediately if we go to a 10 drain system. Those 28 companies are running around the back roads of Ireland collecting waste, collecting... collecting skips, servicing manufacturing facilities, servicing commercial premises, servicing households, and sometimes with the same truck, serving offices and houses and various things.
You know, you lose all those synergies. And how are you going to service those rural areas, those, you know, rural counties, shall we say? If you try and do it county by county, it becomes much more expensive, much more difficult, and you lose a lot of synergies that are serving businesses and businesses.
We have a text in from Rose in Dunmore in County Galway who says, my problem is no bin lorry will come down our road in rural Galway. The road is too narrow, in quotes, yet cattle lorries, meal lorries and 54-seater buses have come in. I don't expect the lorry to come to the house and I'm prepared to take the bin to the yard gate or even to the end of our road.
The only point they will pick up is three quarters of a mile away, which is not practical. So that doesn't sound like consumers have been served, does it?
It's a rare, rare occurrence when a bin lorry can't go down a lane. But it does happen. It happens with bridges and it happens with narrow lanes. And there can be other ways to serve those houses. But look, that wouldn't matter whether it was on a tender or whether it was, you know, the private company side by side competition. The road is difficult in that situation. But look.
If that person wants to contact the EIDL, you may. I'll certainly contact the local waste companies and see if some sort of a provision can be given.
Well, you may expect a call from Rose. Sounds like she's quite exercised about the idea of pushing her bin three quarters of a mile down the road, and I don't blame her. Colin, I mean, there's a lot of views coming in here, a lot of people talking about the streets are being torn up from the constant use of heavy trucks. What about that cost?
It's a disgrace, the amount of different bin lorries that come into my estate. People just want rubbish collected. It's very simple. The public want efficiency, not choice. So there is a range of opinions out there, let's put it that way.
Yeah, I think... From the voice point of view, we would always say, look, it's waste reduction is what we're after. We're kind of in a position where we're running faster to stand still. We're recycling more waste now than we were five years ago. However, recycling rates are stagnant because there's more and more packaging coming onto the market.
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Chapter 6: How does the public perceive the current waste collection services?
Friendly emails. From our experience, Most people want to get it right. They want to put the right stuff into the right bin. And I think if we have those cameras, just the information and, you know, as far as I can see, they're not getting personal details or anything sensitive. But if we can just see what we're doing wrong, then people will go, oh, I didn't know that.
Like if I tell people, for example. Like a pizza tray. People go, it's cardboard, it goes into the recycling bin. But if it's festooned with grease, then it doesn't go into the recycling bin. And most people think they're doing the right thing, but are making that mistake. So little bits like that where we can be gently nudged or said, actually, if you do it like this, you get better.
That does help. So I think there's a lot to be said for that bit of information sharing.
And is the problem with the greasy pizza box that it contaminates the entire green bin load?
There will be minimal contamination, really, but it's just not recyclable if it's covered in grease.
And have the companies found those friendly emails, as you characterized them, to people? I mean, is that having an effect? Huge effect.
A huge effect. I've seen the results and it's reduced contamination by half. And in terms of the... the number of bins that are contaminated, it's reduced that to about 10% actually. But in terms of volumes, it's reduced it by more than half. It's down from actually from 36% contamination to 14% contamination is what I heard last time.
In terms of electrification of the lorries, which sounds great in theory, but we have the experience of buses lying idle for years because the infrastructure isn't there. I mean, there's a whole discussion about the charging infrastructure.
Yeah, so it probably comes back to policy. Like, what are the policy decisions we're making? So I think it's up to 30% now of the grid is for data centres. So do we look at, if we want to electrify this fleet, how much is it going to cost and where do we take it from? Because we can't be compromising people's domestic electricity needs. Yeah, it's kind of like the field of dreams.
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Chapter 7: What are the environmental impacts of having multiple waste collection trucks?
you know, the electricity network to accommodate them. But look, we're not just stuck on electricity. We have quite a lot of people operating with... They're using CNG, compressed natural gas, which is a fossil fuel, but it's a step towards biomethane. And biomethane is where we're doing some really good work now because we've...
A number of anaerobic digestion plants that two of them are producing road transport fuel, biomethane, and there's others on the way. And, you know, these are facilities that we visit with the food waste. So we bring food waste to an anaerobic digestion plant and we fuel up the truck there with the gas that's coming out of that food waste that was brought there. So that's been really good.
Now, we're also using HVO, hydro-treated vegetable oil. So one of our members said to me yesterday, yeah, that maybe hydrogen will be the way forward. We don't know. We have a company that's building a hydrogen plant. You know, so look, a lot of our members are very interested in achieving, you know, net zero by 2040 and are working on those plans.
The diesel fleet will not be the future, you know, but we're not sure will the future be electric or will it be biomethane or HVO?
Lots of texts in on this.
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Chapter 8: How is electrification being integrated into waste management?
One text says, what was wrong with the old state system? It worked perfectly for years. Another says, I hope taking waste collection back into public ownership never happens. We get collections on Bank Holiday, Stephen's Day. If not collected for operational reasons, then collected the next day. Another says, there's a road danger issue of multiple heavy goods vehicles plying the same routes.
It's not just about emissions and efficiency. HGVs are overrepresented in road traffic statistics for people walking and cycling. And then another one, why not maintain the waste collection competition while only having one infrastructure provider, as is currently the case with ESB Networks, providing the infrastructure to the various electricity suppliers, for example.
So there are lots of different views on that. But there we must leave it. Conor Walsh, Secretary of the Irish Waste Management Association and Colin O'Byrne of Voice Ireland. Thank you both very much. for joining us. Coming up later, the latest from Westminster as Keir Starmer battles for political survival.
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