COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, January 10, 2022

MOTION NO. 5

MOTION: Councillor T. Costello

Given the amount of hard work undertaken by voulnteers to collect and bag fallen leaves can this council provide residents with clear bags next year 2022, the lack of provision of clear bags for volunteers this year is resulting in some people using black sacks which leads to delayed collection.

REPORT:

The Council’s Street cleaning contract includes leaf sweeping during the autumn period. There has been an increase in budget expenditure of €169,300 since 2020, on this service since the new road sweeping contract started. Leaves are removed from public roads and footpaths throughout the county. This usually begins in September and extends to the end of January each year. Residents can contact via info@sdublincoco.ie or telephone 01 4149000 or they can contact Public Realm directly on publicrealm@sdublincoco.ie and their request will be added to the list for the contractor.  Since September 2021 the council has responded to 1,238 calls to collect bags of leaves and for additional leaf sweeping requests, the majority of these were carried out within 2 days of receiving the call.

The work undertaken by volunteers is much appreciated, however, providing heavy duty plastic bags for leaves is not considered good practice for the environment as they are immediately ripped open by the contractor to compost the leaves. Public Realm will examine various types of collection bag options including robust compostible bags and reusable hessian bags for future use. Approximately 4,000 rolls of heavy duty bags were issued to residents/groups in 2021 through the Social Credits Scheme.

The Environmental Awareness Office will work with residents associations and/or Tidy Towns groups/Community groups to find alternative ways to address this issue. For example building a composting system such as leaf moulds whereby the leaves can be reused locally as mulch/compost which is a valuable resource and can be used to enrich soils.