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| Bin collection row hots up Even though private refuse collection company Greenstar will not be entering the Dublin 15 market until later this year they were clearly stung by the comments made by Fingal County Council’s Director of Environmental Services PJ Howell in last month’s issue of Community Voice. Within
hours of the paper hitting the streets, Greenstar’s PR company
made a number of phone calls to arrange for the NTR owned subsidiary
to answer some of the council’s criticisms of Greenstar's decision
to introduce its services into the Fingal area. According to Keith McCormack Green star’s Head of Marketing, claims that they are cherry picking areas are unfounded and untrue. “We launched our service on a phased basis in Dun Laoghaire and now we cover all areas. In Fingal we are already operating in some parts of Swords, Kinsealy and Baldoyle and are currently rolling out the service in Malahide, Portmarnock and Howth. It will take us 12 to 18 months to cover the whole county and when we do we are ultimately hoping to get 25% of the market.” The thorny issue of waivers is dismissed as something of a red herring by Mr. McCormack. “Ultimately it’s the tax payer who foots that bill,” he said. “The whole question of the waiver system needs to be debated on a wider basis. Private operators are not afraid of a waiver system if we have access to the funds. It’s not that we won’t do it but at the end of the day the taxpayer is paying for it,” he claimed. This is disputed by PJ Howell who points out that the waiver system, which costs Fingal County Council €2m annually is funded by the council out of its overall environmental budget. “It’s the other users of the service who are paying for it,” he says. In another criticism of the county council Greenstar’s head of marketing claims that they have distorted the figures they are quoting for the cost of the service. “They suggest that the average family will have a lift every two weeks with us as against every three weeks with them because they offer a fortnightly brown bin collection. There is no way that a fortnightly brown bin will reduce your black bin usage by nine lifts a year.” This is also disputed by PJ Howell who points out that this is a specific instance which shows that “the service being offered by private operators is a retrograde step. It is only through brown bin collections that Fingal and indeed the rest of the country will meet landfill targets and reduce the levels of bio-degradable waste. If we do not achieve these targets as a country then we face the prospect of huge fines from the EU. One of the services being offered by Greenstar was a monthly glass collection service for €5. This has now been withdrawn following an instruction from the county council that it was not allowed as glass was not classed as a household waste under the county bye-laws. According to Keith McCormack, “this is an example of a local authority using its regulatory powers to stymie private competition. This is an attempt to hinder competition by reducing the range of products that we can offer and making our service less attractive to the consumer.” PJ Howell responds to this by pointing out that the service being offered by Greenstar was not environmentally acceptable. “They were taking unsorted co-mingled glass in a single container. We know from the glass recycling industry across Europe that unless glass is sorted at source it cannot be recycled as glass. The only use the glass collected by Greenstar can be put to is as a base in road building.” Ultimately for most consumers the issue will probably boil down to one of cost. However just as customers are bamboozled by the lists of figures bandied around by mobile phone companies so too the sets of different figures quoted by the various parties to this dispute are also difficult to compare. Despite claim and counterclaim an analysis of the figures by Community Voice would indicate little difference between the costs of the respective services. However it is fair to point out that Fingal also offer a number of extra services such as the Recycling Centre at Coolmine, brown bin collections and a waiver scheme for low income families. Just like the business itself the current row is dirty and likely to get dirtier. Fingal says that as soon as they get enough business, Greenstar will put up their prices. Greenstar respond by pointing out that whereas Fingal have made a number of price increases in recent years, they haven’t. “In Wicklow we had no price increase last year and just a 3% increase this year,” says Mr. McCormack. It’s a case of you pay your money and you take your choice. And it seems there are going to be plenty of companies prepared to take your money. As the old saying has it “where there’s muck, there’s brass.”
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