Waste Not Want Not
The ‘Pay by Weight’ system will be introduced in the new year for domestic refuse collection in most parts of Ireland. This initiative is an incentive to dump illegally and will probably lead to an increase in illegal dumping activity.
When we were paying the flat rate, no matter how much waste we produced it would be taken away, so we had no incentive to dump illegally. The goal of the new system is to encourage us to produce less waste. I don’t think this makes sense and I don’t think it will work.
For all our sloppiness and ambivalence towards the environment I do not believe we are producing significant amounts of waste just for the fun of it. We are a very materialistic and highly consumptive society and large amounts of waste is an inevitable side effect of this.
Putting financial barriers in the way of people attempting to dispose this waste legally is not going to solve the problem. It just makes it more economically viable for them to dump illegally.
Mark Waters marked time at 9:55 am on December 21st, 2004 .
