May 4th, 1999, is a date that will remain with me to the grave. For on that day the last outlet in the Dun Laoghaire area for recycled paper was removed. It was the Smurfit man in the lorry, preparing to take away the last container, who broke the news. He blamed the Iceland firm which, for some years, allowed the container to sit in its back yard, along with the cars of customers.
"The nearest one now is in Ballyogan," he said. At least that is what I thought he said as, overburdened with grief, and with my heavy sack, I slunk away. It sounded very, very far away, wherever it is.
When the new local government administration area was donated to Blackrock, Booterstown, Dun Laoghaire, Dalkey, and the neighbouring friendly areas, I thanked God for Co Dhun Laoghaire-Rath an Duin.
Liberation
At last we were about to liberate ourselves from Dublin. It was almost like a revolution. Would that Myles had been alive to see this great day. What new plays he might have written; what fantastic nationalist columns of print. Free at last. But no crowds with banners thronged the streets.
"It's a Mickey-Mouse job," confided a local hard chaw, scratching an unshaven chin. "We'll never get free of that crowd!"
Now, it is beginning to look just like that, though a few weeks ago one of the county's administrators assured me that it was really a real county council, "And soon we hope to be registering the new cars down the street."
Whatever about that, the new county council is now in breach of local, national and international laws in that it is making not the slightest effort to provide outlets for waste paper and a variety of other refuse which should be recycled, thus reducing import costs and providing employment, never mind a cleaner home and healthier, general environment. But who'll take them to the High Court (as a start)?
Some months ago the former Minister Niamh Bhreathnach threatened to dump a load of old newspapers on the steps of the County Hall, Marine Road, Dun Laoghaire, in protest at the lack of initiative of our county in providing outlets for waste paper, despite the legal imperatives.
At that time poor Niamh apparently was unaware of the hospitality of the Iceland firm in allowing Smurfit to collect this raw material in the back yard. Some months previously the facility had been ended at the Blackrock shopping centre; and a few years back a like facility had been attacked and destroyed by fire in Glas Tuathail. A similar incident resulted in the removal of the waste paper container at the back of the Dun Laoghaire library, in the car park (which we can no longer use).
It is possible even still to dispose of worn clothing, bottles of glass of various colours, and a few other items in a few places in our great new county. Plastics, old batteries, and other materials which can and should be recycled, are ignored by our new administrators.
County councillors
As for our county councillors, for some reason, even in these election times, they are silent while we citizens fume. Unfortunately, we are in no position to organise a rent strike or something. But what is preventing all the local shopkeepers from having a go? The absence of facilities is costing them money. Oh, I know that that is passed on to us shoppers, in the price of goods.
On occasion, I am invited to holiday in Germany by members of the extended family, and I marvel at how well the German citizen has been trained to deal with household rubbish.
In the kitchen of the flat where, briefly, I reside in Augsburg, there are many boxes. For paper, there are two (one for the clean, the other for the soiled). Another box takes metal; yet another, plastics; still another, glassware. I could go on and on. Fortunately, the kitchen is a large one.
Below, outside, there are a number of containers, huge things, into which housewives and others dump the contents of their boxes at the appropriate time on the right Tag.
The Germans have been at this, as have the Japanese, for very many years, probably for a century. They are well trained. One of the results is that the countryside outside their towns and cities is not decorated by bits of plastic bags dangling from trees, as artistic taste dictates in Ireland. Indeed, in many German stores and shops one is expected to bring one's own bag for the purchases, a splendid idea which I have tried to popularise in the area where I live, without much success.
Public tidiness
"The Irish would never take to public tidiness," according to a neighbour. I'm not so sure. Certainly, I have seldom been alone when emptying my sack of old read (and re-read) copies of this newspaper which so splendidly entertains me in my old age, especially in its use of what we might term the "New English" (indirect speech and so much more confined to the bin).
Our new county might employ litter wardens as well as the necessary containers to deal with the problem. The Department of Education usefully might introduce a new subject for the Leaving Certificate and give it as many points as maths: environment. Whatever happened to that civics course? I have confidence in youth, especially in the womenfolk. I know we could clean up Ireland if only we were given those containers for waste paper, plastics, metals, glassware, timber, grass mowings, and all the rest, backed up by that Leaving Certificate course, and rigid observance of the law - local, national and international. I know that we get a very bad example from NATO but that, please God, will soon pass.