The latest figures illustrate the magnitude of Ireland's waste disposal problems. A total of 42 million tonnes of waste is produced a year or more than 400kg for every individual. Agriculture is responsible for 31 million tonnes, which is mostly reused, but 11 million tonnes comes from industry/commerce, households and street cleaning, not to mention the 313,000 tonnes of hazardous waste coming mostly from industry.
Ninety per cent of household and commercial waste is consigned to landfill, compared to 60 per cent for western Europe as a whole. The national recovery rate for such waste in 1995 was less than 8 per cent; extremely low by EU standards. Meanwhile, the mountains continue to grow by about 3.5 per cent annually.
Landfill is becoming increasingly difficult. The days of local authorities in effect licensing themselves and turning a blind to their poor maintenance and management of dumps are over. At the EU's behest, and enshrined in the 1996 Waste Management Act, landfills must be licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency and independently monitored (it has granted one licence and has 38 applications on its books).
Many dumps are rapidly reaching or have reached capacity and with a move to more rigorous controls, smaller landfills are being closed. The number of operating landfills has been reduced to about 100, which will be further reduced to fewer than 60 within a few years. Networks of smaller "transfer stations" will become the norm, with waste ending up at a large landfill serving a single local or several authorities together. Plans for these "super dumps", which can entail expanding existing facilities, provoke most opposition and, frequently, court challenges.
"With the appalling history of dumps in Ireland, people are absolutely entitled to fight landfill proposals," says Ms Iva Pocock of Voice environmental group. However, the issue comes down to resource management and energy utilisation, and not the acutely difficult question of location, she adds.
It may require a sea-change in attitudes, but the colossal costs associated with the current poor waste management will herald change, she says, though many local authorities remain uncreative, view waste as an engineering problem and have little time for education.
Waste management is one of the crucial environmental challenges Ireland needs to overcome but will have major difficulty in doing so, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's director general, Mr Liam McCumiskey.
"Landfills are the least favoured option for disposal of waste," he told a recent Institution of Engineers conference. A legacy of poorly operated and managed landfill sites had persisted, and because of this the public were often "driven into action at the hint of a new waste disposal facility in their area".
To make Ireland's waste management strategy fully sustainable, we must stabilise and, where possible, reduce the quantity of waste produced, he says, and seriously look at incineration/energy recovery.
The relentless growth of waste mountains continues, but there are grounds for hope. Recycling banks have increased significantly, while new hazardous waste transfer and treatment facilities and waste recovery units are coming into place. Local authorities are at least pursuing extensive waste management plans, while a national hazardous waste management plan is near completion.
These represent parts of the only course possible as landfill options continue to shrink and place further strains on local authorities, while those who wish to avail of the dump option are forced to join the ranks of polluters who pay.