Dublin City Council today published its full inventory of waste figures in its Annual Waste Plan Progress Report and challenged what it called the erroneous waste figures and projections used by RTE on last Thursday night's Primetime programme on the Poolbeg Incinerator project currently under construction.

The Council published the Region's uptodate waste figures for recycling and landfill in 2008  on behalf of the four Dublin Local Authorities. Dublin continued to recycle 41% of its waste and continues to landfill the balance.

 'Last year despite maintaining our recycling rate at over 40%, the region still landfilled some 735,000 tonnes of waste in landfills in Dublin , Wicklow , Meath , Kildare  and further afield ' stated Seamus Lyons Assistant City Manager

'We hope to increase our recycling further by rolling out the remainder of our brown bins and to recover energy from some 600,000 tonnes when the Poolbeg plant is commissioned. This will mean little or no household waste going to landfill in Fingal or elsewhere when our Plan is fully implemented. We will then also fully meet our EU Landfill Directive diversion targets and avoid expensive fines as a region and a country.'.   

The Annual Progress Report also gives future waste projections for the Region up to 2016 and beyond. 'The projections included in the report follows the approach used by the EPA and have been verified by the ESRI.  They are therefore the correct figures as checked and issued by the four Dublin Authorities' he said adding that 'the  projections for residual waste up to 2016 used on the Primetime show last Thursday of only 150,000 tonnes of waste for incineration have no basis in reality' Mr Lyons concluded.

Key statistics from the report include:

• Household waste arisings in Dublin increased by 1% in 2008.
• The recycling rate for household waste in 2008 was 35%.
• There were 11 Recycling Centres and 301 Bring Banks in operation in the Dublin Region in 2008.
• Commercial waste arisings in the region decreased by 5%, with 738,193 tonnes generated in 2008.
• The recycling rate for commercial waste in 2008 was 46%.
• The recycling rate for packaging waste in 2008 was 54%.
• Over 6.5 million tonnes of C & D waste arisings was generated in the region in 2008.

For the Annual Waste Plan Progress Report in full click here...

Created: 19/01/2010