Waste charges- pay by weight

I think we need to move to a tendering process, where waste companies bid for the disposal contract for particular council zones for an annual contract. Surely that would mean lower costs for the companies themselves, if they have to send their vans to one zone only, and know all bins in one zone are for them.

It would be up to the council to agree the annual service charge and per kg charges that would apply to anyone contracting with the waste company in their zone. I can't reconcile the polluter pays principle with competition. Also, the real polluters are those that don't dispose of their waste properly, i.e. dump it or put it in wrong bins - not the people properly disposing of their waste.
The polluter pays principle comes up against the practicality of how easy it is to dispose of your waste illegally - and loses as many times as it wins.

If we're that concerned about what is ending up in landfill, we need to levy the real source of the waste - producers and retailers and factor the cost of disposal into the price on the shelf. If the packaging in your product is landfill bound, then you need to be levied on that.
 
If I leave my bin in a shed for 4 weeks. Why do I have to pay a private company a fee (standard charge) to do this?
 
newirishman said:
It is not a tax. (Water charges are by the way also not a tax but that's a different discussion.)
Families gets hammered? Well, I guess that's what the child benefit payments are there for essentially.
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If it isn't a tax, what is it?
What should we call extra costs incurred as a result of government legislation?
People are using 'tax' here and elsewhere, in that sense, for want of a better word.

Maybe we need a better word, to distinguish between such costs that end up flowing into government coffers, and those costs that do not. I'm not sure if levy is quite the right word either.
At the moment, I'll stick with using tax because it captures the most important thing about this, which is that it's being incurred as a result of government introduced pay by weight legislation.
 
vandriver said:
Seems like recycle right are missing the pay by weight idea.
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Not at all, I had to leave all 3 bins out a few weeks back for tagging. I assume that as the invoice was raised before 1st July, old rates are still applying. According to their website I can look into my account and see my weight per bin, so will wait and see.
 
Tintagel said:
If I leave my bin in a shed for 4 weeks. Why do I have to pay a private company a fee (standard charge) to do this?
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If I leave my car in a shed for 4 weeks. Why do I have to pay a private insurance company a fee (standard charge) to do this?
equally for tax and NCT
 

The costs of every single thing you spend money on is influenced by a raft of government legislation. That doesn't make every penny you spend tax.

This is a charge for a utility service, based on a similar model to electricity or other utilities. Everyone pays a service charge and in come cases government levies to subsidise rural services or network upgrades, then charges after that are determined by how much you use.

Calling this a tax and blaming the government is playing right into the waste companies hands here. They have taken an opportunity to massively hike their prices across the board, and yet most of the complaints are being directed at the government, letting them off the hook.
 
Absolving the Govt entirely is surely not right either.

From Media reports this AM, it appears the Dept of the Environment did very little (i.e. none) research into the impacts of the introduction of pay by weight on average/typical households across the country.
Clueless
 
Interesting point here about cross contamination of the recycling bins with non recyclable material, based on differential pricing.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/fears-householders-will-contaminate-recycling-bins-406018.html
"....“In the processing and recycling business, as with anything, it becomes a product. And the price you get for that product depends on the quality of the material coming off the production line. The viability of the business is based on the quality of product we can get off the production line — it’s central to the whole thing,” he said....."

This contamination issue is a problem with pyrex and other stuff going into the glass recycling.
 
Branz said:
If I leave my car in a shed for 4 weeks. Why do I have to pay a private insurance company a fee (standard charge) to do this?
equally for tax and NCT
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Do you pay a standard charge on top of your insurance cost for your car? The bin companies are being paid for the lift and for the weight. That is all that they should be paid for.

When my electricity goes down there is a team of engineers out repairing the lines, improving the infrastructure and all that goes with providing that service. The standard charge that the utility companies charge (I don't agree with it by the way) is not comparable to the bin companies imposing a similar charge. What extra service are the bin companies actually offering here?

Do the supermarkets, newspaper deliveries, milk deliveries etc charge other than a per delivery fee?
 

You need to take any argument against a pay by weight system to Europe, the Irish government stalled about as long a they could.
 
Branz said:
This contamination issue is a problem with pyrex and other stuff going into the glass recycling.
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It gets worse....how about nappies in the green bins! There's a real danger the quality of dry recyclables will further deteriorate to the point where charges are inevitable.
 
Tintagel said:
The standard charge that the utility companies charge (I don't agree with it by the way) is not comparable to the bin companies imposing a similar charge. What extra service are the bin companies actually offering here?
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Waste disposal is by definition a utility. There is a cost associated with maintaining IT infrastructure and staff the manage a customer base in businesses such as this. I have no problem paying a reasonable service fee to cover these costs. The problem is, €2 a week is not anywhere close to being a reasonable cost.

Tintagel said:
Do the supermarkets, newspaper deliveries, milk deliveries etc charge other than a per delivery fee?
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Different business model, so irrelevant.
 

Of course they do, it's just wrapped up in the per unit price and is not transparent.

In the case of bin charges, if the service charge goes then the price per weight will go up significantly as a result. Hence heavy users will pay more.
 
Leo said:
You need to take any argument against a pay by weight system to Europe, the Irish government stalled about as long a they could.
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According to an Environment correspondent from 1 of the papers on the radio this AM, there was no pressure on Ireland from Brussels to bring in Pay by Weight any time soon. Our recycling %'s were very high by EU comparisons and continuing to go in the right direction.
 
Its going to be suspended for 1 year but those who want to switch to pay by weight can do so immediately.
In the meantime, your bills for the next 12 months will show what the weights were and how much you'd have paid if on pay by weight.

See you back here in 12 months time when it all brews up again

edit- 2 points of concern still:
1. Greyhound and Citybin aren't part of this agreement so they could still plough ahead
2. The 'Freeze' seems to only apply if you put out the same/less waste v's the previous 12 months. What happens if you put out more waste in the next 12 months?
 
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Leo said:
It gets worse....how about nappies in the green bins! There's a real danger the quality of dry recyclables will further deteriorate to the point where charges are inevitable.
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I was having my brekkie when I was penning that: it did occur.
In passing
This arrangement is wrong:
Waste contractors who are members of the Irish Waste Management Association have also agreed to provide a weight allowance to HSE patients supplied with incontinence wear to reduce their annual waste charges. IWMA members are committed to an arrangement whereby the additional weight attributed to non-infancy incontinence wear will be collected free of charge.

First up:
The waste company will get a list of HSE patients supplied with pads.
Secondly, what about those of us that have to buy our own pads and get rid of them.

This is the middle classes paying for the won't pay mob yet again.
 
Branz said:
If I leave my car in a shed for 4 weeks. Why do I have to pay a private insurance company a fee (standard charge) to do this?
equally for tax and NCT
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Your car is still insured against Fire and Theft while in the garage.

If I go off to Spain for a month I should be able to suspend my car tax for that month if the car is on my own property.

Not sure what you mean concerning the NCT?
 

First up it won't happen, Data Protection issues with supplying names of your neighbours who wear incontinence pads.

Regarding your own pads, as with nappies they have a 500 year biodegradable life cycle, burn them
 

The waste company sector is dysfunctional. Why on earth were they cross-subsidising heavy use customers from low use customers?
Are they obliged to provide the service - if they are, that is a public service obligation (PSO). If they are not, why weren't they just cherry picking low use customers via their pricing structure and pocketing the profits instead of using it to subsidisee other customers?
The more I think about it, the less it adds up.

But, when the government, by their legislation to achieve policy goals (worthy or unworthy), disproportionately impacts sectors of society financially, and in doing so displaces costs that were previously borne collectively or through general taxation, I'll continue calling that difference between base price and government influenced price a tax until I hear a better word for it. And I'm all ears for a better word.
 
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