Council to use data from waste-collection companies to target people without bin contracts

Two black bags of rubbish are torn. Rotting food and packaging is strewn across the pavement at the junction of North Circular Road and Belvedere Place.

Across the road beside a bin is another black bag of rubbish, dumped at this crossroads in the north inner-city.

The authorities really need to do more to tackle illegal dumping and litter in the area, says Maria Jones, a small woman with blonde hair.

“It’s not just the council who should be involved,” Jones says. “The Gardaí should be out arresting the people who did this.”

She is delighted to hear that Dublin City Council intends to ramp up enforcement of its waste by-laws introduced in 2018, and that staff are starting with the north-east inner-city.

Using data from waste-collection companies, council workers are to start directly targeting those residents who don’t have bin contracts – and if they cannot prove that they disposed of their waste legally, the council can seek to prosecute.

Councillors said the council needs to run an information campaign first though, so people who buy bags to dispose of rubbish, or take waste to recycling centers, know they have to keep their receipts.

There may be some issues to be ironed out – including misunderstandings about who is responsible for providing bins when houses are split into apartments – but, overall, residents and councillors spoke in favour of the move.

“I think it’s brilliant,” says independent Councillor Cieran Perry.

“We support anything that can tackle illegal dumping,” says Frank Keohane, chairperson of the Ballybough Pride of Place.

What is a reverse register

In the past the council staff knocked on doors across the city asking people if they have a bins contract, says a council spokesperson.

They carried out “door to door surveys increasing awareness of obligations regarding the Bye Laws and enforcement where evidence of arrangements have not been given,” she says.

But now they are trying something new: targeting people they know don’t a have a bins contract.

In the coming weeks, the council will start a pilot project in the north-east inner-city, to target people who don’t have a bins contract, said Barry Woods, the council’s head of waste management, at a meeting of the Central Area Committee on 11 February.

It will compile a register of the addresses of households that don’t have bins contracts, using data provided by waste-collection companies of addresses which do have a contract, Woods said.

“We can then follow that up with cold calling, calling at houses, calling at properties and then we can then prosecute,” he said.

Where residents live in areas with bag collection, they need to keep the receipts when they buy bags in order to avoid prosecution, said Woods. “If they cannot produce that receipt for purchasing tag bags then we can prosecute.”

At the meeting, Green Party Councillor Janet Horner, who chairs the committee welcomed the project as a “significant development”, but she hopes the council doesn’t target the wrong people.

“Plenty of people in all innocence are not keeping the receipts for the bags they are buying and that is an innocent mistake,” Horner said.

A council spokesperson said it will run an information campaign as part of the pilot project, as it rolls it out from this month. “Communication will form part of the workflow.”

Will it work?

“The levels of the dumping in our area Ballybough are just through the roof,” says Keohane, chair of Ballybough Pride of Place.

He says he welcomes the reverse register project. “It’s a step forward in the right direction.”

But the council will need resources to implement it properly, as it’ll be complicated, Keohane says. There could be single people who share bins – and some people will claim they disposed of their rubbish in other ways, he says.

“It’s quite a confrontational job to do,” says Kehoane. “It will be interesting to see how it works.”

Back at the crossroads of Belvedere Place and North Circular Road, local resident Anna Ivanov looks at the rubbish on the path as she walks past. She was surprised when she moved into the area to see the amount of litter and illegal dumping, she says.

She supports the council trying to bring prosecutions, but isn’t sure it will work as a deterrent. “The people who do this, they are a different kind of people,” Ivanov says. They might not care about the council bringing them to court, she says.

Perry, the independent councillor, says that once the council starts bringing prosecutions and fining people it should publicise that. “That will frighten some people off, and then we can tailor a response for the extreme cases.”

Horner and Perry both say that residents living on a street can see who doesn’t put out bins. “People locally know who is doing it,” says Horner.

But the reverse register provides the council with concrete evidence, so they don’t need to rely on witness testimony or anecdotal evidence, she says.

Horner says the council should focus on streets where there is a problem with dumping and use common sense when deciding whether to prosecute people.

Perry says the council tried to enforce the 2018 by-laws previously by knocking on doors and asking people to show that they had a bins contract. That was fairly effective, but required a lot of staff time and resources, he says.

A council spokesperson says that going door to door, the council made residents aware of the by-laws and gathered evidence for enforcement.

“Challenges include lack of evidence available in dumped bags with increasing online billing, also with door to door surveys include ability to make contact with principal resident and communication,” they said.

Using the data from the waste-collection companies to create a reverse register should make enforcement a lot easier, and allow the council to target resources at those who are likely offenders, says Perry.

Who is responsible?

Streets in the north inner-city are lined with big old houses broken up into small flats.

As the law stands, it is the tenants, not the landlords, who are responsible for disposing of their rubbish legally, unless their contract with their landlord says otherwise.

“A landlord is not legally obliged at the moment to provide bins,” says Horner, the Green Party councillor. But she says she wants to see that changed.

“The key thing for me is there has to be a change in primary legislation so that the landlord is responsible for providing bins in shared accommodation,” she says.

Where a house has been split into multiple apartments, or is shared by a large number of people, there isn’t space outside for each tenant to have three bins, she says.

Perry also says landlords should provide communal bins for apartments. “That’s a huge issue and that’s always been an issue,” he says.

If the council implements this reverse-register project seriously, it will get a better understanding of any loopholes that need to be closed, Perry says.

He would like to see the pilot project reviewed after six months, to ascertain whether it has worked and what changes are required if any, he says.