200,000 tonnes of garbage goes missing

The EPA claims that 25% of households are dumping their waste illegally. 25%! TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT! Are they kidding me? (By the way, all these figures come from the recently-published 2005 report.}

We've been here before. In fact, it was a year ago that I suggested that the Department of the Environment didn't know what it was talking about when it claimed that 60,000 tonnes of waste was being illegally burned in backyards each year.

This year, the EPA is claiming that 202,940 tonnes are being burned/dumped illegally/eaten by slave children/whatever. But wait, that may not be quite right. Here's what the Irish Independent says in today's article on the EPA's annual report:

More than 24% of Irish households have either no access to collection services or don't use them, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Waste Report for 2005.

This means that 202,940 tonnes of household waste are being secretly disposed of - either burnt or handed over to illegal fly-tippers.

And, here's what the EPA says in its press release:

The report highlights that 24 per cent of Irish households have either no access to collection services or choose not to avail of them. This results in an estimated 202,940 tonnes of "uncollected" household waste. Considerable work is being done by local authorities to gain an understanding of how this waste is managed.

It's not the same thing to say that the EPA has an estimate of "202,940 tonnes of 'uncollected' waste" as "202,940 tonnes of household waste are being secretly disposed of". The first leaves open the possibility that the estimate may not be accurate and the second claims mass illegal dumping is going on.

Based on a quick perusal of the actual report (see p. 21), I suggest that most of the problem is in the estimate. It just isn't credible that 200,000 tonnes of waste is not being disposed of properly. The report acknowledges that 15,000 tonnes of illegally dumped material was cleaned up by authorities during the year. That means over 90% of the supposedly illegally dumped material is not even being found! That's just not happening.

I think it's clear the EPA has to tighten up its estimate for "uncollected waste" and even clearer that the Irish Independent is way too sloppy in its reporting. First we're killing dogs that don't match the new settee and now we're all burning and dumping our waste - including those unfortunate hounds - illegally.