Pile up as paper recycling market crumples

NEATLY packaged piles of newspapers and magazines are being dumped in Fingal County Council's tiphead at Dunsink because the paper recycling market has collapsed.

School paper banks have been closed since there is little point in encouraging children to recycle a commodity with no commercial value. But some people are hoarding their papers in the hope that the market will pick up.

With Dunsink due to close on June 30th after more than 20 years in operation, the irony that its last loads include a substantial quantity of recyclable paper is not lost on officials. Paper intended for recycling has also been dumped at other tipheads.

It was a "a terrible shame", said Ms Noelle Cull inane, recycling manager of Kerbside Dublin, but there was nothing the company could do about it. "From day one, I think people understood that we were at the mercy of market forces."

Kerbside, which collects from 35,000 households in southwest Dublin, stopped taking newspapers or magazines from April 22nd, though its lorries continued to collect paper cartons and other packaging.

"But the world market for newspapers and magazines, which are the lowest grade paper, has collapsed. It's now cheaper to buy virgin pulp, so nobody wants it, and Central Waste Paper, which everyone fed into, won't even take it from us for nothing.

There used to be a glut of waste paper in Europe. But then China and other countries in the Far East said they needed the paper, and we couldn't supply enough of it. So the price started to jump and recycled paper became an interesting commodity.

"Not too long" ago, Central Waste Paper thought the price would hold for two years. But last October, when everything was still looking rosy, it dropped from £50 per tonne to £5 per tonne and then to nothing, because the Asian countries could buy virgin pulp cheaper."

Because newspapers and magazines constituted a high proportion - over 40 per cent - of Kerbside's total tonnage collected, the over supply in the market has increased the running costs from £98 per tonne to nearly £150.

"However, we're collecting more valuable materials, so the income per tonne has gone up," Ms Cullinane said. "We're also looking to expand the number of households we serve, to make up the difference. Dun Laoghaire is certainly on the cards, because they want it."

Kerbside employs 34 people and has an annual budget of around £500,000, two thirds of it funded by the business community and the remainder by Dublin's four local authorities. There have been no lay offs, however, because collections have been maintained.