Bottle holders installed on public bins by Dublin City Council at a cost of more than \u20ac155,000 have all been removed after senior officials described them as \u201ccompletely useless\u201d and said they were causing more problems than they solved.<\/p>\n
The bin surrounds were lauded as \u201canother step on the journey to a cleaner and safer city\u201d when they were launched by the local authority and Re-turn, the operator of the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n
However, internal emails show that senior council officials branded them \u201can eyesore\u201d and \u201cnot fit for purpose\u201d last month, before ordering workers to remove them from 110 public bins across the capital.<\/p>\n
A number of options for the disposal of the bottle holders were discussed in the emails, with one staff member suggesting that workers could just \u201cdump them\u201d in the bins as they were removed.<\/p>\n
The purchase and installation of the bin surrounds cost the council \u20ac155,000, with a payment of \u20ac35,609 for bottle holders and bin wrapping approved as recently as last month.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Re-turn claimed that the company had contributed 50% of the production and installation costs for the bin surrounds, but was completely unaware of their removal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe claim that Dublin City Council is removing all of the bin surrounds in the city centre is categorically incorrect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Dublin City Council confirmed: \u201cAll bin surrounds have now been removed from all bins.\u201d<\/p>\n
Records released by the local authority under freedom of information laws show that a senior official in waste management services ordered an executive engineer to arrange for the removal of the bin surrounds on May 13.<\/p>\n
The following day, the engineer asked staff to begin removing the surrounds, starting with the Quay and Temple Bar, \u201cbecause these are the most problematic at the moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottle holders have been proven to be completely useless, as I know you are aware,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cWe have [given] them a proper test (as we had to) but they cause more problems than they solve.<\/p>\n
\u201cCould you please remove them when you get an opportunity,\u201d he added, providing details of bin locations in the city.<\/p>\n
Other council documents noted that bin surrounds were \u201cfrequently\u201d being used for general litter, including coffee cups and cigarette butts. \u201cThey are not fulfilling their intended function,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n
Last month, elected members of Dublin City Council were told that the DRS had resulted in the \u201ccoordinated misuse of public litter bins\u201d by people scavenging for recyclable bottles and cans.<\/p>\n
Council officials said bin-raiding had cost \u20ac857,000 since the introduction of the scheme, with additional clean-up operations alone costing \u20ac351,000 per annum.<\/p>\n
Aont\u00fa leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn said the latest revelation regarding the removal of \u20ac155,000 worth of bin surrounds in Dublin was \u201cbeyond the ridiculous\u201d, and called for the DRS to be \u201creformed or ended\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all, we had the \u20ac500,000 annual clean-up cost in Dublin to deal with bin scavenging. Now we hear they\u2019re getting rid of the stupid bins they put everywhere, in a hare-brained attempt to curb it. That’s another \u20ac155,000 down the drain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo self-respecting country would put these all over their capital city. The whole purpose of a bin is to remove waste from sight, not to put it on display. Anyone could see they\u2019d cause bigger problems than they\u2019d solve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn, who has called for a review of the DRS, said the Government had to make a decision in relation to the scheme. \u201cIt\u2019s not working. The public hates it. It\u2019s not cost-beneficial, either environmentally or economically. It needs to be reformed or ended.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bottle holders installed on public bins by Dublin City Council at a cost of more than \u20ac155,000 have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-496197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}