Galway claims to have embraced recycling more than most local authorities. Lorna Siggins outlines its new "multi-bin" culture and its impact on demand for incineration and landfill
By any scale, Galway's success in recycling its waste has been remarkable. More than 50 per cent of all household waste it collects now goes to recycling, and it is already 10 years ahead of target figures for the city.
In effect, Galway has been so successful it has been penalised.
Having spent some €2.6 million last year on introducing a recycling and composting scheme, it was informed the Government grant scheme for local authorities was not retrospective - yet.
That 10-year leap relates to targets for diversion of household waste from landfill, and reduction of landfill-bound household biodegradable waste.
Galway City Council collects about 97 per cent of the urban area's household waste.
The quarterly figures for last March to May given an indication of the trend, according to city manager Mr John Tierney.
During that period, the amount of waste going to landfill was cut by 50 per cent compared to a similar period in 2001.
In 2000, some 17,530 tonnes of a total of 18,080 tonnes of waste was landfilled. In the first three months of this year, only 2,174 tonnes were landfilled.
And Mr Garry Ó Lochlainn, senior executive engineer with the city council, says if this rate is maintained for this year, there will be a 50 per cent reduction in the amount of waste landfilled compared to two years ago.
The crisis over the county landfill at Ballinasloe may have concentrated minds, to the extent that there is a determination by residents to make recovery and recycling work.
The Poolboy landfill takes waste from both city and county and is nearing its sell-by date.
A dispute involving private contractors in February 2001 resulted in uncollected refuse on the streets for over a week.
Under the Connacht Waste Management Plan, which proved to be extremely controversial, four potential sites for incineration or thermal treatment of all of Connacht's waste were identified.
Initially, a majority of councillors voted against the plan, but pressure to approve was exerted under the amended Waste Management Act of 2001, and it was passed in September 2001.
Galway for a Safe Environment (GSE), an umbrella lobby group, took its unrelenting protests over incineration to the Galway Races last year and insists such high recycling rates obviate the need for what it believes will be a costly, voracious, polluting incinerator.
It was shortly after approval of the Connacht waste plan that the Galway recycling initiative was introduced, and it is almost a year now since people in Galway embraced the challenge of a black bin, a brown bin and plastic bags for sorted, clean recyclables.
A third or "green" bin which saves on a recyclable plastic bag system is currently being delivered on a phased basis throughout the city.
Deploying a "green team" of information officers was central to the scheme's success in the local authority's view.
Householders are currently required to put food waste, grass cuttings and other compostable material in a brown bin, which is emptied once a fortnight and taken to the city's composting centre at Liosban Industrial Estate.
Every alternate fortnight, a black bin containing non-hazardous and non-recyclable waste, such as silver paper, is emptied, and this is taken for landfill. A separate company, Barna Waste, on contract to the council, collects the recyclables - plastics, cardboard and paper.
The emphasis is on "clean and dry" or "washed and squashed". Not all of this is actually recycled but at least 75 per cent is, according to Mr Tierney. "Inevitably, as with material sent for composting, there is an element of contaminated waste that shouldn't be there, but we have to say that Galway householders have responded marvellously to this initiative." Some items, such as butter and yoghurt cartons, have no outlet.
"We still felt it is better to accept it, clean and dry, and at some point there may be an opportunity for its regeneration."
The third bin will not only save the householder the chore of sorting recyclables into separate plastic bags, which have to be purchased, but it will also take some of the material which householders currently bring to banks, such as bottles and food and beverage cans.
It is fitted with a chip to facilitate introduction of a "pay by weight" system of charges. At present, there is a flat annual fee of €250 per household.
"We are examining pay by weight and looking into a pilot system but it requires a lot more thought," Mr Tierney says. Not every household in Galway is fully engaged in the system. "We have 17,900 households signed up but there are 1,430 houses that still require the old bag collection," Mr Tierney says.
This is due to problems of space. There are city centre apartments and terraced houses where there is no back yard. "We are looking at ways of giving them coloured bags, or grouping them in some way, but they are the minority in any case."
The council has a separate depot for hazardous waste, to which householders are advised to bring old batteries, herbicides, weedkillers, paint or paint stripper, aerosols, adhesives, cleaning agents and other materials.
There were some teething problems with this as it became a "victim of its own success", according to Mr Ó Lochlainn. Its capability had to be restricted for licensing reasons,
He accepts there is a popular perception illegal dumping has increased but he doubts this. Though there is no method of quantifying it, he believes the rate is probably constant.
There is an increased awareness of waste issues, he notes.
In Liosban, community wardens search carefully through illegally-dumped bags which they locate for evidence which could lead to a prosecution.Has Galway overcome the need to build an incinerator?
"There will always be an element of waste that will not be recycled, such as soiled packaging, and there will always be an element of waste that will not be economically recycled," Mr Ó Lochlainn says. "In fact, recycling some wastes may be environmentally unsustainable. The issue is whether the residual waste should be landfilled or thermally treated."
The success or otherwise of recycling initiatives is a separate matter, he says.
This is echoed by Mr P.J. Rudden, of MC O'Sullivan, who warns that regional targets for diversion from landfill are still a long way off being met. Moreover, the targets won't be met at all without thermal treatment, he says.
"Landfill is so onerous and so expensive, and that is the reality," he says.
The proposed thermal treatment plant for Galway aims to take all of the region's waste and work is proceeding on one of two residual landfills - in east Galway, with the other proposed for north Connacht.
Drive-in recycling centres are also at various stages of initiation in Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon and Leitrim, and a regional waste co-ordinator has been appointed.
So far, however, there is no kerbside system on the scale of Galway.