Refuse charges to rise as food waste bins added

Tens of thousands of householders in Co Cork are likely to face increased refuse collection charges from the summer when they will be legally required to use brown bins to dispose of food waste.

The introduction of brown bins is being phased in throughout the county from July until 2016.

Those who live in the county’s larger towns will be the first to use them from July 1 and smaller towns and village will come on stream in a phased basis thereafter.

Sharon Corcoran, the county council’s director of environmental services, said that draft bylaws were also being drawn up by the local authority to coincide with the implementation of the additional bin collection service.

These include that the onus is on all householders to ensure their waste is collected by an approved collector, or disposed of at an approved facility.

Those provided with the new brown bins will have to ensure they are only used for the disposal of food waste or light organic material such as garden clippings.

Collections of bins will only be allowed between 6am-9pm on weekdays and 8am-8pm at weekends and Bank Holidays.

Householders will not be allowed to put out waste for collection before 6pm on the day before collection.

Anybody who breeches these bylaws can have an on-the-spot fine of €75 imposed on them.

Ms Corcoran said in advance of the July roll-out a team of people had been recruited by the local authority to visit housing estates, schools etc in the areas which will be chosen to take the new brown bins.

“These people are graduates who are being employed under the Jobbridge scheme. We hope to have them all in place by the middle or end of February. They will then visit householders and schools and explain to the them the new system,” Ms Corcoran said.

She said similar legislation was in place all over Europe to segregate organic waste and it was now being introduced across Ireland.

“It’s designed to stop organic waste going into landfill, because that’s where the gas comes from. People can of course compost some organic waste at home,” she said.

As Cork County Council sold off its refuse collection service to private operator Country Clean some years ago, it is no longer in the waste collection business.

Ms Corcoran said that as a result the local authority wouldn’t be providing the brown bins.

That will be the responsibility of the licensed private contractors who are in the waste collection business.

It is expected that the consumer will have to foot the bill for the bin and Ms Corcoran admitted that extra collections as a result of the additional bin were likely to increase the cost incurred by the user.