Waste management - We have all made a skip of the nation

WITH the amount of waste each person generates annually set to double by 2020, it would be hard to exaggerate the sheer scale of the mountain of rubbish rapidly growing in Ireland.

According to internal documents seen by the Irish Examiner, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicts that nearly a third of the country’s 35 licensed landfills will be full within two years. Moreover, 11 dumps around the country could be closed by 2011 with four more likely to be shut down by 2014.

There are two sides to this problem — the disposal of waste by local authorities and the gratuitous plundering of the countrywide by feckless individuals who think nothing of throwing their rubbish over a convenient fence or into once pristine rivers which are becoming more fouled by the day.