A major public education programme is required over the next two years to "prepare Dublin for waste management in the new millennium", according to the MCCK consultants' report.
This derives from their conclusion, following a public consultation programme in 1997, that Dubliners take waste disposal for granted. "The reality is that many people do not regard waste as a problem at all," they say.
They attribute this apathy to the fact that people have their refuse "removed efficiently by local authority staff every week" to a landfill site somewhere else. "Furthermore, they pay nothing for this service, regardless of the amount of waste produced."
At the same time, according to the report, there was a "tremendous desire" among the public to see greater levels of waste recycling, as well as support for an extension of door-to-door collection of recyclables.
However, as most householders made "little or no mention of the cost of implementing waste minimisation programmes", the consultants say a "clear linkage" needs to be generated in the public mind between the relative levels of environmental protection and resulting costs.
Current waste management in Dublin is primitive, as the report makes clear. There are "no public waste recycling centres as such" in the city or county, no separate collection of hazardous waste from households, too few "bring" banks to facilitate recycling.
Construction and demolition waste, the biggest single category at 1.2 million tonnes per year - and growing because of the boom - is hardly recycled at all.
Since Balleally is the only public landfill in the city or county which accepts this waste, it is estimated that possibly 50 per cent of the total volume of builders' skips, particularly that generated in the south county area, is deposited in landfill sites outside Co Dublin.
The rest of Dublin's annual waste production of 4.3 million tonnes consists of household waste (380,000 tonnes), commercial waste (398,000 tonnes) and non-hazardous industrial waste (480,000 tonnes), with agriculture and mining accounting for the remainder. Recycling diverts between 12,000 and 20,000 tonnes from landfill.
The consultants recommend that £5 million should be invested over two years in setting up new structures in waste planning, regulation and public education together with significant community-based initiatives in waste reduction and minimisation.
New waste services departments should be set up within each of the four Dublin local authorities, the report says. It also suggests that the level of public awareness could be raised by a "Dublin Wastemobile", "kitted out with up-to-date literature and staffed by suitably qualified personnel".
The consultants say the local authorities should also support initiatives such as the Global Action Plan, under which households agree voluntarily to limit the waste they produce, as well as producing videos and regular public information leaflets.