Households must change attitudes to waste, says Richard Bruton

People have to change behaviour in the way they deal with household waste, Minister for Education Richard Bruton has said.

“What we have at the moment is that many homes do not segregate or try to minimise the amount of waste,’’ he said.

Mr Bruton, who was taking the Order of Business in the Dáil, said the Government also wanted to protect people who might be vulnerable.

He was responding to People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith, who claimed the “cartels” involved in waste collection were being allowed to do what they liked.

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Earlier this week the Government and Fianna Fáil agreed a new system of waste charges, paving the way for a pay-by-weight regime to be extended to all householders and for a new regulator to monitor pricing in the waste industry.

Mr Bruton said there would now be an incentive for people to minimise waste and to use the three principles of good waste management: reduce, reuse and recycle.

He said elements were put into segregated waste, whether into the green bins or black bins, that were not supposed to be contaminated by food products.

“If that segregation does not happen right, then we create a major problem for the environment,’’ he added.

Nationalisation

Ms Smith said the only thing that could be done to safeguard the service in future, and to keep the environment safe in cities and towns, was for the service to be taken back into the ownership and control of local authorities. Last year, she said, a total of €1.5 million was spent by Dublin City Council dealing with illegally dumped waste.

Mr Bruton said Ms Smith would be first to complain if a dump were provided and there were foul smells as a result of the system not being applied right.

“There will be an oversight of price monitoring to ensure that there is no gouging of consumers by abuses of this system,’’ he added. He said there were 67 waste providers with different schemes, and people could pick and choose.

Ms Smith claimed fly-tipping was being encouraged by the system and the Government.