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

64.5 Collection Modelling for Ireland: Assessment of Current and
Potentially Achievable Collection Costs and Resulting
Annual Charge Levels
Although the assessment conducted in the previous sections establishes that
collections in Ireland are particularly expensive compared to international experience,
the full reasoning for this has not yet been explored. Data provided by a collection
company operating in Ireland provides a particular insight. 1286
The cost of collecting waste from households is strongly influenced by the number of
households the collection vehicles can serve each working day; the lower the number
of households, the more vehicles (and crew) are needed to perform the service. The
key detail in the data provided is the quote “The typical number of homes serviced in
a single shift using a standard truck is 300.” Even in Eden, with its low (including by
Irish standards) population density, the residual waste collection vehicles average
700 households per day on a collection route. In a more typical situation in the UK we
would expect wheeled bin residual waste collection services to achieve pass rates of
the order 1,200, with ranges from around 900 to 1,300 households depending on
the rural/urban nature of the local authority. Daily pass rates in urban settings can be
above 2,000 where the collections are entirely sack based.
It is difficult to understand how conditions could so severely limit collections in the
Ireland context to just 300 collections per day; there is no reason for transport
logistics to be significantly different from the broad range of conditions faced in the
UK (and certainly, the Irish average would not give rise to lower pass rates than in,
say, Eden). One possible issue leading to this situation may be the free market
approach to collection whereby collection densities are severely reduced.
Using the Hermes collection model we attempted to model a collection system
achieving just 300 collections per day. The model is populated with the combined
experience of benchmarked collection data provided by industry collection operators
from a considerable number UK authorities. Frequently, we have made use of the
model in a fully transparent mode with a collection contractor watching over us.
We have assumed that collection crews in Ireland have similar working practices
(work time per day for example), and that logistics are broadly similar to the most
challenging of those in the UK (Eden as a specific example). We have, however,
adjusted the parameters in the model to account for the low levels of subscription to
the services in the Ireland context by increasing the effective distance between
households served (representing a lower route density). A pick up rate of 300 was
modelled by assuming poor transport logistics and one in 5 households subscribing to
the service. Even so, a very high collection time per property also needed to be
modelled to deliver the costs which had been presented. This may be associated with
the fact that a low collection density will mean collection crews are forced to
frequently get in and out of the cab between pick-ups to get to the next collection
1286 Greenstar (2009), The Economics of Brown Bin Domestic Waste Collection in an Irish Context
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International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes