Galway citizens are voting with their rubbish on controversial plans for incineration. Preliminary results from the city's new household waste service show a significant fall in material bound for landfill.
The city has almost halved its unrecyclable waste for September, compared to a similar period last year. Mr John Tierney, Galway city manager, told The Irish Times that 768 tonnes of rubbish (out of 1,077 tonnes collected) was sent to landfill, compared to 1,433 tonnes for a similar four-week period last year.
"If you take September 2000 as 100 per cent, then this September was 54 per cent down on the previous year," Mr Tierney said, adding that he was very heartened by the results. The local authority's new household waste management and recycling scheme is now collecting segregated waste, and about 16,000 of a total of 17,500 households have signed up so far.
"The scheme won't be fully rolled out till the end of this month," Mr Tierney said. "So we won't know the full trend until early next year, but we will be anxious to see if this significant reduction in landfill waste will continue."
Galway sent 17,000 tonnes of domestic waste to landfill last year, but last summer it forecast a reduction of 10,000 tonnes by 2002 if the new scheme worked. Galway is pioneering the "green" scheme, in that "no other area is quite as advanced", according to Mr Tierney.
The local authority began by dispatching a "green team" of advisers to call at every household with a detailed list. The Irish Times office is one of the thousands of participants, having recently received two large wheelie bins (one for organic compostable waste, one for landfill) and a roll of clear plastic bags in which segregated waste can be deposited for reuse and recycling.
The "green team" list takes some rereading (an A-to-Z guide would have been handy). Cartons and plastic containers and bottles have to be washed and squashed, while food must be wrapped in newspaper. Food cans and glass bottles are no longer collected and must be taken to recycling bins. Hazardous waste such as cleaning agents, batteries and aerosols must be disposed of by householders themselves at corporation collection points. It is an approach which requires considerable effort, but one which Galway has risen to, in the view of the manager.
The city is funding the initiative itself through existing domestic charges, pending the announcement of capital grants to local authorities by the Department of the Environment. The corporation's £600,000 composting system, comprising a Dutch forced aerobic digester, did have some teething problems. There were complaints of a smell and of swarms of flies, but the local authority stressed that once it began making compost, it would not require agitation. The "pong" would, therefore, vanish.
The corporation is examining introduction of a third bin which would replace the recycling bags. "We would do the segregation ourselves, if we develop our own materials recovery facility," Mr Tierney says. Currently, the recycling element has been put out to contract.
A pilot "pay by weight" scheme is also being considered, though there are fears this could lead to a wave of illegal dumping. Under the scheme, bins would be fitted with a computer chip. Details of the weight charging system still have to be worked out: at the moment, householders face an annual charge of £170.
Some city councillors believe that illegal dumping has already increased; and there is the dilemma faced by people living in confined spaces who cannot cope with large wheelie bins and an array of recycling bags.
Mr Tierney says the local authority is reviewing the size of the bin in some locations. But generally the scheme has been a success.
