Waste Charges by Weight - Anti Family ?

N

niallymac

Guest
Recently I was invited by my local authority, Dun laoghaire Rathdown, to participate in a trial in advance of the introduction of waste by weight charges next year. I declined to participate.

The literature accompanying the trial pack, outlined a schedule of charges. As my bin is always full, stamped down to compact it, filled to brim, stamped down etc, it is a jolly old weight when it comes to dragging it down my drive on a Sunday evening (I sometimes have to pop an extra bit in neighbours bins that have space also) Anyway, I did a rough calculation, and for the pleasure of having my bins collected next year, I am looking at in excess of €1k based on what there proposed schedule of charges indicates. I would like to add that I already recycle everything i can.

I have a 2 year old and new born twins. We therefore have a nappy problem to say the least. Anyone that has a large family, or a young family is going to pay big time for this. (terri nappy brigade, I don't want to hear it, life is time consuming enough thanks very much) The country needs kids and needs them quickly or like the rest of Western world we will start showing net population decline (excluding immigration). No kids, not enough money to pay for the next generation of pensioners, vicious circle etc....

I accept the argument for paying for waste by weight, but can't reconcile this and many other govt taxation policies which are clearly anti family ? Having kids is a noose around the neck in Ireland, there are no incentives only extra costs. Until this govt starts to reform the tax arena when it comes to families, levels of childbirth will continue to decline rapidly. Immigrants will neccessarily become the lifeblood of the economy (and nothing wrong with that)
 
Hi Nially - Congrats on the twins. I imagine you have your hands (and your bins) full.

We therefore have a nappy problem to say the least. Anyone that has a large family, or a young family is going to pay big time for this. (terri nappy brigade, I don't want to hear it, life is time consuming enough thanks very much)
Click to expand...

I think this is the nub of the problem. You are effectively saying (& I'm paraphrasing for effect here) that the 'polluter pays' principle is fine for other people, but not OK for you.

Remember that you hold our land 'in trust' for your children. You have 'borrowed' it from them, and you'll need to give it back when they grow up. Do you really want to hand them back a land pock-marked with quarries full of disposable nappies? Even if we ignore the nappy issue, aren't there ways that you can reduce the amount of waste coming out of your house? Have you made an effort to buy the sausages wrapped in paper, instead of the ones in the plastic tray? Do you avoid pre-packed fruit & veg?

Waste charges are specifically designed/intended to change your behaviour. There is no point in having such charges if they don't force behavioural change. You seem to expect that you should be able to continue on with your life exactly as before the charges, with no impact, provided that your excuse/reason is good enough e.g. "life is time consuming enough". But that just wont work.

[Just for the record, we use disposable nappies too at home - I do plan to check out the washable ones, which I hear have improved greatly since the old terry nappy days]
 
There's a lot in here niall.

Just on levels of childbirth. Do you think it's directly linked to level of income or taxes etc...?

I would imagine it has more to do with individual needs as opposed to years ago when people had big families for other reasons...

I'd be happy enough having one child. Two at a push, because I always feel a little sorry for only children.

My choice to only have one or two children in the future is not a financial one...it's a personal choice which I think reflects what some younger people want out of life nowadays.
 
There was a programme on the BBC a few weeks ago, and some company offered a service whereby they collected washable nappies (unwashed) from your house, washed them, and then brought them back to you.

I thought there was a good service. I wonder if anyone is starting anything similar here?
 
If I recall correctly parents of twins (of triplets etc.) also receive a special welfare grant payment of €635 on the birth, 4th and 12th birthdays of the children.
 
Congratulations on your production (twins, not waste!).

On the other hand - I'm living between two homes at the moment, one in Dublin where I pay my yearly bill of €300 (I think it is) and in Waterford where I pay per weight.

In Waterford I'm very careful about recycling, separate everything and it has made a huge difference to the amount of rubbish I have. It has made me conscious of the amount of packaging we use etc. It's had an effect on our waste bills.

In Dublin I have half empty bins if I use the same principals and I'm still paying the same as everyone else regardless of whether I put out my bin or not!

I agree with Rainyday, this is intended to change our behaviour, it's certainly made my family think twice when it comes to waste.
 
I do sympatise a bit, as I think a fairer approach would be for pay by volume. As almost all of it ends up in a landfill, surely, it doesn't make a difference if you bin is heavier than others.
 
Waste Charges

All very valid points folks, and of course the ultimate reward exists with all the magic moments that children bring to your life.

What started as a rant about waste charges rambled into govt fiscal policy on the family.

I accept all the stuff about the blight of waste on our landscape, nappies being one of the worst offenders. Rainyday, we do actually minimise purchase of packaging waste at all times, I'll try some of your arguments with my wife when she's got all three of them baying for a combination of grub/attention ! ( my death notice will appear in Mondays Times ! )

Piggy, of course levels of childbirth are not directly linked to taxation, but with cost of housing and other factors making it almost universally necessary for both partners in a relationship to be in full time employ these days, the cost of having children does become a huge issue for many in Ireland. By the way, I was going to stop at two children, and then the Obstaetrician said those words that changed my life forever ... "there's one, and ther's another one, congratulations you have a twin pregnancy " . WOuldn't change it for the world
 
I think by weight is far fairer than by volume.

Ten nappies could be squashed down to a smaller size than 5 nappies.
 
kids/tax

Ok, cat among the pigeons time...
I'm thankfully in a well paid job and am surrounded by colleagues earning very high salaries. They have kids and I can't reconcile myself to the amount of tax-free children's allowances they are raking in.
I can't be reasonable about this...it makes my blood boil.
 
kids/tax

> There was a programme on the BBC a few weeks ago, and some company offered a service whereby they collected washable nappies (unwashed) from your house, washed them, and then brought them back to you.

Try rollercoaster.ie for recommendations. There may be others but this crowd might be of interest:

www.naturesbabes.com/
 
`Waste

Thanks Crusader, the cat is amongst the pigeons, feathers everywhere !

Why does the child allowance make your blood boil ? I may be well wide of the mark here, but is there not some suggestion that to means test it would be unconstitutional, given the position the child holds in our constitution ?

If you remove this payment, you remove the only govt support for the whole process. Who is going to pay for the future provision of our againg state ? Look at Germany and others, no kids no money to pay for the olds. Not everyone is in a position to provide for their own retirement. Of course, you could just raise taxes, but I somehow suspect you would find this less palatable
 
Re: `Waste

Personally, I think the childrens allowance is so small that it isn't really important either way - You won't go mad on 30 euro a week.
 
Re: `Waste

> I may be well wide of the mark here, but is there not some suggestion that to means test it would be unconstitutional, given the position the child holds in our constitution ?

I think you are all right. There are nine mentions of the words "child" or "children" in the constitution and none of them deal with the issue of state financial support.

www.taoiseach.gov.ie/uplo...ic/256.pdf
 
Re: `Waste

> You won't go mad on 30 euro a week.

No - but it should more than cover the additional "by weight" costs of waste disposal for a family with children compared to one without I would assume - the original nub of the argument?
 
Child Support

I stand corrected "unregistered user". I haven't got time to read that one just now, but will trust you are correct.
 
Waste by Weight

I do believe that the pay-by-weight system is the fairest but it's not without its issues. But niallymac has made me think of a friend of mine who is due to give birth to twins next month (something in the water I reckon, cos I have a neighbour expecting twins too!. She doesn't want to use traditional disposables for environmental reasons and has been looking into other disposable options such as wood pulp (which breakdown quickly) and compostable. There's a bit of an anomoly in the system if you pay extra for environmentally friendly nappies (which she is prepared to do) and still get hammered by a pay-by-weight charge when it comes to disposing of them.

I am really fed up with the fact that the consumer is winding up taking the brunt of the waste problem. I know Repak charges businesses on the basis of the level of waste they produce, but does it look into excessive and/or less-desirable packaging systems, eg does it offer incentives for businesses to use environmentally sound packaging? Drinks bottles drive me crazy. I recycle mine but I think that only approx. 5% of regrind can be used in the production of new PET bottles so there must be lot of so-called "recycled" PET hanging around somewhere. Aluminium and glass are easier to recycle properly, so why not just ban PET bottles? But why would the government do that and upset business-government relationships when they can pacify the electorate with semi-solutions instead (that's just speculation btw)? And sure if they electorate are happy enough buying bottles of water and "recycling" them, it'll take the pressure off tap water-quality issues too. And since PET is low density, you can put a lot of them in a pay-by-weight bag before it's a major issue.

I have my doubts about the recycling of Tetrapaks too because their layered construction makes them difficult to re-use. So here's Joe/Josephine Soap trekking off to the Civic Amenity Centre with the recycling and there's a fair chance that the stuff is going to end up in a landfill in the end anyway.

I tried raising this issue with canvassing local election candidates - they looked at me like I was mental. "Who cares" is generally the attitude.

Rebecca
 
> I am really fed up with the fact that the consumer is winding up taking the brunt of the waste problem.

But it's not just the consumer as you say - e.g. Repak, REPS etc. The "polluter pays" principal dictates that (dis)incentives are required in order to change behaviour. Consumers can fairly easily make choices that help reduce, reuse, recycle. We all have to play our part.
 
How does the "polluter pay" principle work in practise though? I argue that there is an unfair distribution of the responsibility between consumer and producer in respect of packaging and waste. As far as I can see, a payment to Repak based on wasteful by-products seems to exempt producers from taking packaging issues seriously. You can't buy fresh water except in a PET bottle AFAIK and milk is only available in PET or Tetrapak. At our local bring centre these two items account for a pretty big percentage of the recycling. The choice here is fairly pathetic. I already highlighted the issues with the nappies - the dept of health sanctions distribution of FOC promo brand-packs in maternity wards without any balancing info on alternatives (incidentally an increase in chemicals used in washing terrycloth nappies isn't necessarily all that desireable either).

Rebecca

PS While I'm at it ... one of our local schools is now doing a school tour to the Coca Cola factory. Is there no hope?! :)
 
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