Shameful hike in recycling charges by council

THE announcement that Cork City Council is about to raise the prices at the Kinsale Road Recycling Centre for domestic landfill waste from €20 to €25 (up massively from €10 in 2005) per car, coupled with a new charge of €2 for every visit to the recycling centre, beggars belief (Irish Examiner, January 5).

In addition, the cost of bringing a small low-sided single-axle car trailer full of waste will rocket from €10 to €70.

What kind of weak-kneed, ineffectual councillors and TDs sit on the council to allow this pernicious assault on the civic-minded public, who manfully separate their waste on a daily basis and undertake regular trips to this centre?

These green-minded voters are delivering exactly what we have been exhaustively encouraged to do — by the local authorities, by the EPA, by the Government and through all elements of the media, including expensive campaigns such as the Race Against Waste one.

Now we are told that we must pay for this privilege — presumably because the council feels that if we can drive to the dump, we can afford to pay for it.

What kind of twisted logic is this and what a pathetic response from the council’s spokesperson that “the cost of recycling is very expensive …”

Those of us who regularly visit the Kinsale Road centre carefully separate our waste and deposit it into whatever containers the council wants.

This valuable resource is then either sold to waste recoverers or given free to them.

How is recycling expensive?

What are Cork City and County Councils doing with the millions of euro of landfill tax which is collected for every tonne of waste from the commercial sector at €15 per tonne?

Surely this should part-fund the running of recycling centres — and if they need more, they should go back to the Government and ask for more funds to encourage more of us to recycle even more.

All those involved — council management, councillors and TDs — should hang their heads in shame at this invidious tax, which will only result in increasing the level of illegal casual dumping. And some of these people are going to come among us shortly to ask us to vote for them.

Who should hang their heads in shame then?

Maurice Bergin

Managing Director

HSC Ltd

Eastage Village

Little Island

Cork