COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL
MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL
Monday, December 13, 2010
MOTION NO. 4
MOTION: Councillor C. Brophy
That this council calls for -
1 The reintroduction of the Saturday Collection of Bin for customers of this Council who have Black bin Collections on a Bank Holiday Monday.
2. The introduction of a new system to inform people of problems, collection date changes and increases in charges as the current methods are not working satisfactorily.
3. A rotation of the day that households have there bins collected, a 5 year rotating basis would ensure fairness for all households in relation to the impact of bank holidays.
REPORT:
A proposal for the restructuring of the refuse collection service in tandem with the introduction of the brown bin included a provision for collections to take place on the actual bank holiday itself was negotiated with the unions with talks concluding in May this year. This negotiated proposal was however rejected following a ballot of refuse collection staff. Following this there was intensive discussions with the Labour Relations Commission which enabled the introduction of the brown bin. Part of the agreement at that time with the LRC was that there would be further talks in early October which would encompass the presentation rates following the brown bin. Therefore talks under the auspices of the Labour Relations Commission to resolve the issue of bank holiday refuse collections and other issues took place and resulted in the provision of a collection on Bank Holiday Monday 25th October at a collection only cost of approximately €19,000. Some 3,700 bins were collected on this day. When this is compared with statistics used to analyse the previous saturday collections it is a presentation of which is a presentation rate of 24%. The previous Saturdays yielded approximately 10% while the daily presentation was 40%.
Saturday collections in lieu of bank holidays were discontinued because of low grey bin presentation rates combined with high costs of providing such collections. The presentation rates for these collections were running at between 5% and 10% and the discontinuing of it was part of the strategy of keeping costs to the customer at a minimum.
There has been an ongoing campaign to encourage refuse collection customers to register their mobile phone numbers for text updates in relation to the service and to date almost one third of all customers have done so with more than 24,000 numbers now stored. This shows that the preference of customers for the text message communication which it is considered best suits the refuse collection service as the service is subject to short notice changes which do not easily lend themselves to other means of communication. This service is complimented by the standard practice of web and e-mail updates which combine to reach large numbers of customers and facilitates information spreading by word of mouth thereafter where it is not possible to communicate directly with every resident of the County at short notice. Plans are in hand to enable customers to register for information on the Council website so that direct communication across a wide range of services can be provided.
However, where possible, and where necessary, such as in the case of the recent price changes for the waste collection service, leaflets can be delivered to every household in the County and other media such as press releases and adverts as well as social network media can also be used. The recent increase in charges was notified to every household by means a direct leaflet campaign. The brown bin has been delivered to each customers' home and has been accompanied by an information pack. There was significant advertising in the media prior to the introduction of the automated advance credit system and this was followed by each customer being individually notified with an information pack accompanying their new waste card. The Council uses all media available to it in communicating with customers
It has previously been acknowledged that customers ordinarily collected on Mondays are affected more than others and refuse routes are being examined to explore available options to lessen this impact. Additionally, it was agreed following discussions in the Labour Relations Commission after the ballot referred to above, that a full examination of refuse collection routes will be carried out using route optimisation software and current supply issues to determine what improvements can be made to the overall service having regard for the customer base, location and presentation rates.
It is worth noting that the presentation rates of brown bins on Monday routes are quite good considering the early stage of its introduction we are at and as a result this is reducing the issue in relation to the black bin collections. In addition, refuse collection staff have collected all backlogs of waste including any side waste presented in black bin collections following the bank holiday over two days - Monday 16th August and Saturday 21st August. A combined total of 9,904 bins were presented - giving a presentation rate of 50% and containing 384 tonnes of residual rate. It should also be noted that on the Monday directly after the bank holiday a brown bin collection took place and there were 4,544 bins presented - a presentation of 30% and containing 105 tonnes of bio waste. The review of routes will form part of an overall review