The couch and nursery collection held at the Athlone civic amenity site recently proved an enormous success with a whopping 14.6 tonnes of relevant waste product collected.
These collections were funded by the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment Anti-Dumping Initiative and were free for the public to use. From the minute the opening time started cars were pulling in to off load their once-loved couch or clear out the contents of their nursery from years previous.
These collections were organised as much of the rubbish dumped illegally in our countryside consists of couches, armchairs, nursery equipment and toys. Earlier in August a similar free collection for mattresses took place and in excess of 700 mattresses were collected for recycling.
“While dumping is intentionally done there is an element of waste that is given to ‘the man in the van’, in good faith, to bring to an authorised facility but ends up being illegally dumped. It is important that the public are aware of the need to be responsible for their waste disposal by using a permitted kerb side collection or using an authorised waste facility such as the recycling centre in Athlone,” Ruth Maxwell, Environment Department, stated.
Recently, by-laws were introduced aimed at reducing illegal dumping and backyard burning, increasing participation in kerbside collection and improving the segregation and quality of waste recycling at the household level.
Under these new by-laws, a fixed penalty notice (maximum, €75 ), can be issued by the local authority or a member of An Garda Síochána to a person who fails to comply with same.
