COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

south dublin county council crest

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, February 09, 2009

QUESTION NO. 13

QUESTION: Councillor E. Tuffy

To ask the Manager if he will investigate, possibly by way of a pilot project at one or two locations, the possibility of providing containers at Bring Banks for the disposal of plastic bags and cardboard boxes, to facilitate residents in using the banks for disposing of glass and plastic bottles and reduce litter, and if he will examine the practice of Dublin City Council in providing such containers? 

REPLY: 

The Council has provided such facilities at Bring Banks in the past and experience has shown that these facilities tend to be misused in a way that attracts illegal dumping and vandalism. The Council provides a network of litter bins across the county in addition to providing a weekly black bin service and a fortnightly green bin collection that is available to every household in the county, and also provide bottle bank and civic amenity facilities in order to ensure that people have sufficient means and opportunity to dispose of waste material in an appropriate fashion.

The Council makes strenuous efforts to ensure that the waste facilities provided for the public are maintained to the highest standards through a combination of awareness raising campaigns, educational promotions, enforcement initiatives and cleansing services (on which the Council expends some €7,000,000 each year).

It is essential that the waste facilities provided for the benefit of the public are protected by the Council. The Environment Department gets frequent and continuous representations from community groups, residents associations, business interests and public representatives where waste facilities are misused by those persons that do not have as high a regard for the environment as the majority. These representations, in the main, tend to be in relation to Bring Bank facilities and to come in the form of requests for clean ups and/or the removal of same. This is unnacceptable to the Council and to the majority of people who wish to maintain a clean environment and dispose of waste in a responsible way and it is encumbent on the Council to ensure that good value accrues through the most effective use of the Council's cleansing budget and that the responsible majority have adequate facilities for waste disposal.

The Council's experience has shown that the provision of the facilities proposed at Bring Banks is not in the best interests of a well maintianed network. The experience of this Council is also the experience of the other Dublin Authorities.