I thank the committee for inviting us to come before it to make this presentation. Members have been provided with hard copies of our presentation. For the benefit of the committee, we have also brought some executive summaries of the Dublin waste management plan and some CDs.
South Dublin County Council is the second largest of the four Dublin local authorities and caters for a population of 240,000. It is a highly urbanised county. Our county town is Tallaght. Our county has seen a growth in household numbers of more than 20% in the past ten years, bringing us to a position where we have approximately 82,000 households to serve. While there is very strong economic activity within the county, there are also many areas of disadvantage. Four of the RAPID areas are located within south Dublin county. In terms of waste management planning, we work in close co-operation with the Fingal, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Dublin City councils, working at a regional level in terms of major infrastructure and service provision.
In a more local context, the services we provide in south Dublin are those relating to refuse collection. The latter are provided directly by the local authority. The waste is baled and transported to our landfill at Arthurstown in County Kildare. Some of our services are provided on a joint venture basis with contractors but they are fully funded by the council. The main one of these, which may be familiar to some of members, is the green bin dry recyclable service provided to all households in our county and in the Dublin region. We also have an extensive bring bank network that is comprised of approximately 50 such banks. I will mention these later in terms of challenges with which we are faced. We operate a recycling centre at Ballymount where we also have a WEEE — waste electrical and electronic equipment — reception centre in Ballymount. Since 2003, we have supported a community-based social economy project, namely, the Clondalkin community recycling initiative. This is an interesting initiative which dealt with waste electrical and electronic equipment well in advance of the introduction of the directive and which has been in place since 2003.
On the waste profile of our county, in 2005 we collected and disposed of approximately 61,000 tonnes of household waste. While this was a reduction of 3.5% on 2004, the reduction in 2004 was more significant because SDCC introduced a pay-per-use system in advance of the statutory requirement. That resulted in a reduction in household waste of approximately 18%. A total of 77,000 tonnes was collected in 2003, compared to 63,000 in 2004. There was a further reduction in 2005. Approximately 12,000 tonnes of waste is recycled through the green bin service in south Dublin county. That is also an increase of 18% on the previous year. The handout provides more detail in this regard.
The putting in place of plastic bring banks was one of the initiatives the council introduced. These were situated in neighbourhood locations and resulted in the diversion from landfill of approximately 4 million plastic bottles in 2005. This is an important initiative. We have a green waste centre in Lucan, which was the only one serving the Dublin region until last October and which diverts significant waste from landfill. The council also runs an environmental awareness programme, which is targeted at various sectors and which underpins all our activities.
I refer to the cost implications and funding of the service. The council receives significant capital funding from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government for major infrastructure such as the material recovery facility and the biowaste plants proposed for the Dublin region. One of the most important challenges we face, in the context of funding the recycling service, is how to overcome the perception that recycling is a revenue generating or costless exercise. At regional level, the green bin service costs the four Dublin local authorities approximately €27 million. This includes the costs associated with collecting, transporting, segregating, processing, shipping, marketing and so on. Repak, the packaging industry approved body, contributes €1 million, while the sale of the product collected from households generates approximately €500,000. A significant cost, therefore, arises in providing the service. A large proportion of the material in green bins compromises newspapers and magazines and it is important that the newspaper industry should make a contribution to support the cost of recycling material. This should also apply regarding plastic material, which is due to become part of our service once the facilities are in place to recover it. It costs SDCC between €7.5 million and €8 million to provide the service. While the council applies a household waste charge, it is well below the cost of the service and that is a significant issue.
Recycling in the region has increased from 7% to 26% and this has resulted in a reduction in the waste diverted to landfill. We successfully introduced pay per use in 2004 and we have seen the benefits of that. The green bin service provision to all households resulted in the recycling of 50,000 tonnes of material in the Dublin region in 2005. Regional bring bank numbers have doubled, as has green waste recycling. Our regional information website, www.dublinwaste.ie, is an excellent resource and I encourage everybody to make full use of it because it provides significant information.
A number of challenges must be overcome if the council is to meet the ambitious targets set out in its waste management plan. The recycling target is 59% taking us from 26% in 2003. Household size is decreasing and that generates more waste. People are also generating more waste as their spending power increases. Despite citizen goodwill, the council feels it must explain continually that environmental benefits have an economic cost and we need to secure a commitment in this regard. We will also need support for the successful introduction of the brown bin service and that will require us to work hard on our information and communication plan. Fingal County Council has introduced a pilot brown bin system.
We recognise that to build on the goodwill of citizens we need to provide accessible infrastructure, an area in which we are currently experiencing much difficulty. On the bring bank network throughout the Dublin region, we are losing sites because we are being requested, as a result of vandalism and dumping, to remove them from private developments such as shopping centres and so on. We are also experiencing difficulty finding new locations because we are working in an urbanised environment where there is not available to us the volume of land available in more rural areas and because of objections to the location of sites in close proximity to housing. We are experiencing a significant problem in that regard. Reaching the level of sites required under the national service indicators is proving a real challenge for us.
On the green waste service, we have encountered problems during the past year or so in its proximity to housing. That, too, is an ongoing issue for us. On the built environment, again in the Dublin region, we are having to develop new models to deal with the higher density living that is now apparent. Apartment living and higher density developments require us find new models to deliver a service to the public. On the polluter pays principle and cost recovery, it is important that we provide a fair and balanced contribution towards the cost of providing a recycling service. We are working at regional level to find an appropriate balance between the contribution from industry, producers and households.
The issue of market recyclables was mentioned in the EPA report published yesterday. On waste reduction at source, it is important that we consider issues such as the elimination of waste, packaging redesign and other measures that can help to reduce waste thereby minimising the amount of material to be recycled. On the future for South Dublin County Council and the Dublin region, we have provided members with copies of our waste management plan.
The next major service initiative we will be introducing is the roll-out of the brown bin system. We plan to provide two biowaste facilities at Ballyogan in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Kilshane in the Fingal area to cater for that system. Those facilities will need to be in place before we can provide the service. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council will shortly advertise for the procurement of the design-build-operate contract for the facility at Ballyogan. We hope that facility will be in place within 18 months to two years at which time we will roll out the system. In the meantime, Fingal County Council is operating the pilot system that will provide us with the information we need.
We will continue our strategy to promote greater reduction and recycling of waste. We will also seek to identify new ways of expanding the network of recycling centres. In that regard, our waste management plan makes provision for 22 further recycling centres. A new materials recovery facility to be located at Ballymount will enable us to introduce the plastic waste scheme into the green bin. We have recently been advised that we will receive grant aid from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government towards the fit-out of that facility. Cost recovery and, as I mentioned earlier, the producer initiatives, are critical in this area. The main emphasis in the plan is on waste minimisation and awareness, both of which drive our reduction and recycling strategy in the region.