International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

The nature of these authorities themselves is also worth some consideration.
Ballymoney Borough Council is a predominantly rural authority with 27,000 residents
and a population density of 70 people per square kilometre. Approximately one third
of the population live in Ballymoney town. Coleraine Borough Council, an important
tourist destination has a somewhat seasonal population of around 56,000, a
population density of 115 people per square kilometre and over 40% of residents
living within the town of Coleraine. Although these districts may be fairly
representative of the general topography of the ROI, they have untypically small
administrative boundary areas.
The issue this presents, particularly in the Ballymoney case, is that only a very small
number of collection vehicles are required. As such, they tend to be less efficiently
utilised. Ballymoney, using just two vehicles for recycling and two for residual waste,
operate only eight and a half days each fortnight. Coupled with short working days we
calculated the redundancy to be around 25% of a standard (5 day) working week. In a
larger authority this redundancy would be reduced by more accurately matching the
collection requirements to the vehicle provision (and consequently reducing collection
costs). However, in this case Ballymoney is able to keep costs lower than they would
otherwise be by using an average crew size of driver plus one on its collection rounds.
Matching crew sizes to the demands of the collection round is a useful means of
keeping costs in check.
The leading option modelled for this work in both the Ballymoney and Coleraine
studies was an option with food waste and dry recyclables both collected weekly and
sorted at the kerbside onto stillage vehicles. Residual waste was kept as a fortnightly
service to best maintain (in the absence of charging for waste, which is still not an
option in the UK) an incentive to recycle and reduce costs of refuse collection. In
these cases the figures extracted from the model are as follows:
1045
� Ballymoney: €90 per household per year (total collection cost);
� Coleraine: €83 per household per year (total collection cost);
In terms of whole system costs (in other words, the costs of provision of the totals
service, including costs for sorting, treatment and disposal), the figures were:
� Ballymoney: €170 per household per year (total system cost);
� Coleraine: €147 per household per year (total system cost);
In other words, the cost of systems inclusive of a weekly food waste collection are
considerably lower than the average charge in Ireland for a system providing dry
recyclables only. It is not possible to explain these differences through reference to
specific input factors alone, as we shall see below. 1284
1284 See Eunomia (2008) Ballymoney & Coleraine Borough Councils Kerbside Collection Appraisal and
Modelling Report, Report for WRAP.
International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes