The consultants' report on waste management in the Dublin area is a very useful contribution to the debate on how the city can deal with one of its most pressing problems. The consultants, the MCCK Group - who have still to finalise their review - speak in clear and forthright terms. One member of the Irish/Danish team - commissioned by Dublin's four local authorities to review waste management strategy - said that the situation in Dublin is "very bad " and likely to get much worse. There is a consensus among them that Dublin is generating far too much waste and faces a potential crisis unless swift remedial action is taken.
The consultants recommend the construction of a municipal incinerator to burn most of the city's commercial and domestic refuse; a recommendation that is likely to prove very contentious. There will be questions raised about possible harmful emissions and possible health risks. And few will want to see an incinerator in their own neighbourhood or town.
But it may be that there is no credible alternative. The situation is dangerously close to breaking-point. Dublin is generating so much waste that some 30 per cent of it now has to be dumped in unregistered landfill sites outside the city area. The average family is thought to generate one tonne of waste - the equivalent of 100 refuse sacks - per annum. And the volume of waste is increasing by about 3 per cent every year.
Dublin faces a formidable task in building an effective waste management strategy. The scarcity of landfill sites, (even with the opening of the dump at Kill, Co Kildare) the lack of adequate recycling facilities and the definite sense among Dubliners that their rubbish is someone else's problem compound the difficulty. On balance, the approach favoured by the consultants in which they make the case for incineration, with recycling and landfill playing a secondary role, appears sensible. The current reliance on landfill is unrealistic in the longer term, according to the consultants. And, for all its merits, recycling can offer only a partial solution at best, since food items account for a remarkable 40 per cent of household waste.
The waste-to-energy option recommended by the consultants has much to recommend it. It would allow for the burning of huge volumes of waste which would otherwise be dumped and, in the process, it would generate energy without recourse to oil and coal. The experience in Copenhagen should help to point the way. For the past 20 years, the city has incinerated all its waste, using the energy generated by the process to fuel a large-scale district housing scheme. The consultants skirt around some of the more contentious questions. They do not recommend a specific site for any waste-to-energy facility. Neither do they endorse the plan announced by the last administration for a £113 million incinerator/power station at a site north of Blanchardstown, Co Dublin. The public will want to be reassured about the possible dangers of incineration and it will want reassurance that EU standards will apply to emissions. The task now is for policy-makers to convince the public that waste-to-energy represents the best way.