COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, June 13, 2022

QUESTION NO.12

QUESTION: Councillor Lyn Hagin Meade

To ask the Chief Executive to clarify if recycling and composting bags are available to community litter picker events.

REPLY:

Bags and clean up materials are supplied to community groups under South Dublin County Council’s Social Credits Scheme (www.socialcredits.ie). In 2021 approximately 1,200 clean ups took place in South Dublin and crews from Public Realm collected the waste from all of these hugely popular events.  The Council currently supplies only general waste bags to community clean ups, as the litter collected at these events is often contaminated with other materials. All material types are therefore collected together from the clean up events.

The waste arising from community clean ups is disposed of at a local waste transfer station where the waste materials are segregated by the operator, as far as this is possible.  For example green waste goes onwards from the transfer station for composting, this waste stream is easily segregated and it is important for the composting process that it is clean and uncontaminated.  Plastics and metals can also be easily separated out, either by hand picking or by sorting equipment, and these streams are recycled for the most part with only a small fraction lost due to contamination. 

South Dublin County Council will shortly begin preparing a new Community Recycling Strategy and we will investigate the feasibility of running a pilot segregated waste collection for community groups as part of this strategy.