Counting the huge cost of failing to recycle
Thursday, 2 February 2012
STRABANE'S ratepayers are paying more than £250,000 to dispose of waste they could be recycling.
Malcolm Scott, Strabane District Council's chief technical officer, made the startling revelation during a recent meeting of the council.
At the end of last year the local authority started attaching green stickers to black bins found with recyclable waste.
A recent district-wide survey found that on average 29 per cent of black bins were still being used to dump re-usable material. In areas of Castlederg that figure rose to 56 per cent of the bins picked up.
Prevailing lax attitudes towards recycling have also foiled council plans to refuse to collect a bin found with renewable waste, such as paper or plastics, more than once. Fears of a pile-up forced council to postpone the initiative before Christmas.
It currently costs the cash-strapped authority £258,000 to transport and dispose of renewable waste.
If the problem was addressed, the council would be pulling in a tidy £90,000 through sales of recyclable material now found in the district's black bins.
Sluggish recycling has dominated council expenses for the last four years. Waste disposal continues to account for one-ninth of the local authority's £9.6m annual budget.
This week, Mr Scott appealed for a common sense approach.
“I think any business could not afford to bury £90,000 at a cost of £258,000," he said.
“Strabane District Council has changed its systems. We have re-branded our sites as recycling sites and we introduced stickers as well.
“Waste disposal is costing Strabane District Council £1.6m this [financial] year. So this will have quite a significant impact on the rates."
He added: "We are having a further meeting of the working group about this. But it's about people's attitudes to waste. A lot of people have this thing that we take it out and put it in the bin and the council is responsible for it then."
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