The Government of Ireland will make all consumers pay by weight for waste collections and introduce mandatory service levels next year, as part of a move to ‘modernise and professionalise’ the waste market structure.

Speaking at the Environment Ireland Conference on Thursday (11 September), Alan Kelly, the Minister of Environment, Community & Local Government, said that he would be introducing new reforms in 2015 to ‘improve performance, standards and levels of service and compliance records’ in the waste industry.

He said: “We have moved in a relatively short space of time from a system in which municipal waste authorities had full control over the waste market, but were over-stretched and under-resourced to do the job and operate to the standards required under national and EU law, to a situation in which we have handed over responsibility to the private sector, without giving the State adequate levers with which to regulate how services are provided. This is the worst of both worlds in my view. And it has to change.”

Kelly highlighted that he has “some significant concerns” regarding the current performance of the household waste industry, including:

• the level of below-cost selling, which Kelly calls the ‘race to the bottom’, and the environmental damage that can arise from this;
• the de-stabilising effect the ‘race to the bottom’ can have on the market, and the extent to which it is ‘discouraging investment in the development of badly needed indigenous waste treatment capacity’;
• the levels of customer service offered by a number of collectors, ‘who are often merely ticking boxes when it comes to their customer charters, or implementation of the three-bin system without trying to drive more responsible behaviour or offer incentives’; and
• the current compliance levels and number of enforcement actions that the Environment Protection Agency and local authorities are having to take against large and high profile collectors, ‘of whom we should all expect better’.

He added that he was also “very concerned” that some operators were failing to roll-out food waste collection services, despite the requirement to do so under the Household Food Waste Regulations.

As such, he announced that from 2014, a number of measures would be introduced to “specifically tackle these issues”.

These will include:

• ensuring all consumers pay by weight for waste collection to ‘incentivise the greater reduction of waste and to move towards the long-term goal of zero waste’;
• mandating service levels and introducing statutory customer charters, to which waste collection companies will need to adhere or risk losing their permits;
• banning the ‘below-cost’ selling of waste; and
• examining the possibility of a statutory wage-setting mechanism for the industry to ‘ensure stability, certainty and industrial peace’.

Kelly concluded: “I am prepared to proceed with the reform programme, to give it the necessary teeth to make it as effective as possible and to give it a chance to bed in...[I]f next year the level of compliance with the new reforms is not sufficient, then I am prepared to take steps next year to review the current regime and system and consider other market approaches that can deliver the necessary improvements for all household waste collection markets in Ireland.

“In that regard, the waste industry needs to be clear though: the new regulatory framework is the ‘last chance saloon’ for the industry to demonstrate that they can work individually and collectively to improve performance, standards and levels of service and compliance records. I will give consideration to introducing a different market structure in the future if this does not occur.”

Read more about Ireland’s waste collection reforms.