Nearly all Dublin's waste sent to landfill

ALMOST 670,000 tonnes of Dublin’s waste was disposed of in landfill sites in 2009, 350,000 tonnes more than Dublin City Council is contractually required to provide to the Poolbeg incinerator.

However, of the 668,750 tonnes sent to landfill, just under 260,000 was collected by local authorities while the remainder was in the hands of private operators, several of which have said they will not bring waste to the Poolbeg plant.

The figures are contained the council's annual progress report on the Waste Management Plan for the Dublin Region,which was presented to councillors yesterday. The report details the amount of waste collected, recycled/recovered and disposed of from the four local authorities in the Dublin region.

The figures were not included in the latest national waste report published last month by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) due, the council said, to a change in its computer systems which meant they could not be supplied in time.

The EPA report shows a drop in 2009 of more than 8 per cent in the amount of municipal waste generated, which the agency attributed to the recession and falling consumption.

The city council’s figures show a far less significant fall of just 1 per cent and it projects a steady increase in waste up to 2020.

Some 1,234,035 tonnes of municipal waste were generated in the region in 2009 including 464,671 tonnes of household waste, 731,927 tonnes of commercial waste and 37,437 tonnes of street sweepings. Of this, 565,258 tonnes were recovered, giving a recovery rate of 46 per cent compared with 39 per cent nationally.

The remaining 54 per cent, or approximately 670,000 tonnes, went to landfill facilities. This represented a drop of about 9 per cent on 2008 due to increasing recycling and the introduction of the organic waste bin to households.

In 2009, just over 300,000 tonnes of waste were sent to landfill sites in the Dublin region with the remaining waste sent to facilities in other counties.

However, since then all Dublin landfill facilities have closed, with the exception of Balleally, which will close later this year and has very limited capacity.

Almost all Dublin’s waste is being sent to landfill facilities in Louth, Offaly and Kildare, but the report said this is a short-term disposal solution. The council plan is that from 2013 municipal non-recoverable waste will be processed at the Poolbeg incinerator.

Work on the incinerator began in 2009, but has been suspended since last May. The council earlier this month said it was in discussions with its private partners, Covanta, in relation to restarting the project as soon as possible.

Opponents of the incinerator, including former minister for the environment John Gormley and the Irish Waste Management Association, have said the Dublin region would not produce enough waste to fulfil the contract with Covanta which requires the local authority to supply 320,000 tonnes of waste a year.

While 670,000 tonnes of Dublin’s waste were disposed in landfill in 2009 only 260,000 tonnes were collected by local authorities; the current figure would be lower because the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown collection has been taken over by private operators.

A spokesman for RPS, the council’s waste consultants, said contaminated green-bin waste, sewage sludge and illegally dumped waste would bring the local authority figures to more than 300,000 tonnes; the remaining 20,000 tonnes would be made up by private collectors.