Deputy Noel Coonan TD
Noel Coonan TD has welcomed today’s announcement that €105,415 has been allocated to North Tipperary County Council to assist the authority in meeting the costs associated with the operation of their Bring Banks and Civic Amenity Facilities.
Speaking to Thurles.Info this morning, Deputy Coonan said; “It is important to promote recycling now and into the future, especially as most landfills have closed or are about to close. This money will encourage our local authorities to continue to provide necessary waste management infrastructure. We can see that civic amenity facilities are hugely successful, and this funding is an incentive to increase opening hours and facilities throughout the constituency.”
Mr. Phil Hogan, T.D., Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, today announced the provision of €5 million in funding to assist local authorities in meeting the costs associated with the operation of their Bring Banks and Civic Amenity Facilities for the period January to June 2011.
The funding is provided from the Environment Fund, through which the proceeds of the plastic bag and landfill levies are utilised to provide assistance and support, in respect of a range of waste management, litter and other environmental initiatives.
We do need a COUNCIL run recycling facility here in Thurles like they have in Nenagh and Roscrea for electrical goods etc, with the council running this, they will be accountable for any pollution/smells etc. Not a private one like the Envirobin is planning for Cabra and I really hope that this planning application gets rejected, to protect the beautiful environment out that way.
Chris, Here in Thurles, “The dogs must eat of the crumbs which falls beneath the Masters Table.” Green policy is dictated by inside traders.
Even our governments refuses to understand the benefits of rain water harvesting for the countrys toilets in public building, factories and schools. Instead they choose to collect “water rates,” from these properties based on metering systems. Surely here is an opportunity to create real jobs for long term benefit, in the building and construction sector. The manufacture of cement holding tanks and erection of same, in such concerns, would help us through another year at least.
Of course we prefer to accept flooding as an alternative, while we plan to pipe water from Lough Derg to Dublin, at the taxpayers expense.
It was pretty stupid introducing water rates into schools. All these “environmental” measures as they call them which they introduce are just scams to pay down the bankers debts. What you mentioned above is a good idea but they wouldn’t want to lose out on the money they make. Just read on Tipperarystar.ie that Shannon Development will be sponsoring the Christmas market. Is this the same Shannon Development that let us lose all the companies in Stradavoher during the 1990-early 2000s and then sold our industrial estate during the boom time? I think what we need to do in Tipperary is get out of this so called “Mid Western region” Limerick City and Ennis will always benefit first before any cent of funding left over gets thrown at Thurles. Lets hope we get swallowed up when unified with South Tipperary in the “South East region” like Clonmel is in. We would probably get some much needed money/investments more often and get rid of this useless development agency from our county.
Some good points there Chris and George, but just to return to Deputy Noel Coonan’s statement where he says ‘the costs associated with the operation of their Bring Banks and Civic Amenity Facilities’
As I have advocated previously recyclables are not waste, because they are re-worked and used as the raw materials in producing more consumables. At present the public and business’ are required to seperate and accumulate like materials with like (as in paper with paper, plastics with plastics etc) which are then collected by either private or semi-public operators and transported to facilities where they are further accumulated and condensed into bails for export or requirments of home industries. This much we all agree upon.
However what no-one seems to know is how much is a bale of paper or plastic worth on the open market from week to week or a tonne of aluminium/tin fron cans, or the metals and electronics from old cars, TV’s and appliances? Surely it must be worth while collecting these materials else no-one would be in the business of recycling. Although we know that landfill could not go on and was the personification of unsustainability, I do not believe that ‘waste company’s’ and in particular private operators are collecting recycling materials from homes and business for the good of the environment, its a profitable business.
Maybe you could argue that council operated collection services might require funding on initial start up, but after that should be self financing with potential surplas. So what exactly are the costs of operating bring centres? We are never told. The assumption is that we should leave that to the ‘professionals’ and that people aren’t interested as long as their bins are collected and emptied.
The complete recycling infrastructure in Ireland has been very poorly thought out and completely dis-incentivised. If at the outset people were told that if they made the effort and their respective bins contained the correct materials, were seperated properly and not mixed (with rotting food and liquids, used nappies in on top of clean dry recyclables) etc that their collection costs would be then based only on the ‘land fill/incinerator bin’, in other words the bin which is un-recyclable, after all by going to the trouble of seperating out your refuse, rinsing out milk cartons and used tins, wrapping your food leftovers in a few sheets of newspaper etc, is all facilitating the eventual easy conversion of these materials into fresh profitable raw materials for industry/agriculture… where is our cut and our share? We did most of the hard work here! we purchased the products, and took time to make sure that any unwanted packaging or leftovers were propely recycled into the appropriate bins, so don’t we deserve something in return?
Councils should publish quarterly in local papers the tonnage collected, the quality of the materials, the end use destination, the price per bale on the market, the costs involved in collection and processing, the amount of un-recyclable material left over after these processes and the amount of non-recyclable waste collected on the doorstep as opposed to the amount or recyclable waste collected and then suggest reasons for this and endeavour to improve.
What I am trying to say is enough of the cloak and dagger policy here. Involve people. It’s our ‘stuff’ that is being collected and it is making money for someone somewhere while we are paying to have it collected. Surely the moneies received from the sale of recycled material would be enough to run a few bring centres? In my youth you got 10p return paid on a large leamonade bottle. This continues in Germany and Netherlands and most other EU states, why was it scrapped here? Instead we are expected to load up our glass containers (which most of us have already rinsed out) and take them to the bottle banks where we further seperate them ourselves by colour using our own time and probibly petrol in the process, I mean we are doing the job for ‘them’ with nothing in return?.
Without incentivising recycling for everyone we will continue to have illegal dumping (usually a result of people unable to pay for collection). I know that here in Galway, come tuesday evening there is a substantial pile of empty cardboard drink box’s left at the bottle bring centers why no have a cardboard and plastic collection unit placed beside these bottle and glass centres?
The bane of my thoughts on this issue has to be black plastic refuse sacks. Why are they even on sale here in Ireland? they contradict everything to do with efforts to change the national psyche on refuse/waste/recycling. A black sack can contain anything, invisible, packed and tied and put into ‘whatever’ bin. Total disencentive again. People in Ireland are desperate for strong decisive leadership which listens and includes and perseveres, and instructs (where are the adds on television about what to recycle where to recycle, how to recycle etc) instead of more of the same half-heartedness, disinterest, fear of the untested, party politics and the same old powerful lobby groups of capitalistic industry and agriculture forcing privatisation or a watered down version of everything and anything, particularly the radical solution.
If private enterprises are willing to pay as the add says ‘good money’ for your old mobile phone what then is an old car worth in recyclable materials or an old television set? Its all a bit of a bluff and the householder is payin dearly for something that should be practically free or even worth a few bob to you for making the effort.
It was painful over the last few years listening to the debate about the Pool-Beg incinerator being planned for Dublin and a couple more on the cards for around the country. Mega capacity incinerators which the government was happy enough to guarantee tonnage for into the future while at the same time the same government was trying to roll out recycling, a complete contradiction. If it weren’t for the recession and the lack of funding it would be going ahead now and of course as we know from the contract details if the incinerator was not getting enough waste to burn per-annum, the state (taxpayer) would have to financially compensate the foreign managment consortium1… madness.
Chris I cannot believe Thurles has no ‘bring centre’ for electrical goods and dangerous or caustic liquids/substances. If one were locally run surely a few people could be employed dismantling and accumulating materials there for eventual recycling, the payments received through the sale of the recycled material paying there wages at least?
But finally Chris, it is a pity that you view all environmental efforts with suspicion, but I don’t blame you. Because the way these initiatives are implemented is always a joke, half-assed, and ends up costing a fortune, the costs of which usually end up being bourne out by the ordinary person. To think that Dublin City Council could not ‘afford’ to continue with their public bin collection service is also laughable, but you know there always seems to be a private sector operator lurking nearby ready to do the un-doable.
Folks we are entering a new phase of conservative, neo-liberal, private sector, selfish and uninclusive type of political era here and in England. Health, Education, crucial necessities like water/electricity, welfare are all being attacked and allowed to slip into such a state that eventually the public will be crying out for private sector multinationals to move in and take control.
What we need are “proven successful business people,” taking a much more active part in local government, instead of voting for would-be “gabby,” party political individuals, whose only claim to fame is having no proven record of ever succeeding at anything. We need to be asking for CV’s, just like any other job interview. Would your business employ any of our present public representatives?