More on Waste collection in Dublin…

What is the word that comes to mind when one reads more comments reported in the Irish Times from Michael Buckley, chief executive of Greyhound, as regards waste collection services in Dublin? What is the word?

While one tries to find an appropriate term here’s some quotes:

“I’m running a business and I can’t afford to provide free bins. If I was to start doing that I have to go to my paying customers to ask them to pay more to subsidise the people who aren’t paying,” he said.

“When you go into Tesco is there a waiver aisle? When you go into the petrol station is there a waiver pump? Private businesses don’t do business for free, the best we can do is give you the best price in the marketplace.”

Hold on a second. Firstly waste collection is a societal good and a public service [paid for or not]. Secondly there is no such thing as a developed marketplace for collection – and indeed arguably couldn’t be given the limitations and constraints of having to collect bins [the environmental impact of competing fleets of bin trucks haring around housing estates is never mentioned in all this but presumably near duplication of services isn't the best, or indeed the most efficient, way of addressing these matters]. So applying a commercial model to a service provision that is entirely necessary for the smooth functioning of ordinary life, commerce and so on is entirely inappropriate. And the ‘marketplace’ in this instance is an entirely notional and artificial concept.

But now there’s more. A 16 per cent plus increase in lift charges.

Landfill levies will increase from €50 to €65 a tonne in July. Mr Buckley said the company would pass that increase on to customers through the “per-lift” charge, not the standing charge. The lift charge for the standard grey bin, currently €6, would rise by about €1, or just under 17 per cent. Similar percentage increases are likely for other bins

He continues:

A lot of the negative publicity had been generated by people who did not want to pay their bills, he said.

That’s simply incorrect. The negative publicity has been generated by Greyhound’s palpable inability to provide the service they had been ‘sold’, the lack of advance warning from Council or Greyhound, and very reasonable anxieties given the history of Greyhound as articulated by Shane Ross and others as to the nature of the sale and the service.

And even when Buckley attempts to shift blame he makes the situation worse:

However he said much of the criticism of the company was unjustified. “Politicians have been kicking this around, making unjustified comments like it’s been a shambles and chaotic. When you look into the facts, the service has bedded down now and we’re in the high 99 percentiles in terms of collection rates.”

There was a problem with some 22,000 customers who were using bags instead of bins. Greyhound did not have a database of residents using bags and so some streets were missed. Between 80 and 90 per cent of complaints related to bags left uncollected or bag customers not receiving information, but these issues had been resolved, he said.

This is bizarre. A company takes over a service and ‘misses’ streets?

And there’s this:

The entire waste collection model could change next year, Mr Buckley said, to pay-by-weight, if it was what customers wanted. “In my view, the fairest way is that the highest user pays the most, the lowest user pays the least.”

This is a dismal analysis. It ignores ability to pay, different life circumstances – anyone with babies or small children will know that quantities of waste increase rapidly in those circumstances and so on. It echoes Stephen Collins approach some weeks back on the same topic.

And of course, for the MD of a waste collection company to be making it is profoundly self-serving.

But worse it slots neatly into a discourse whereby ‘customers’ pay for services, but where intrinsically costs for those on lowest or low to medium incomes proportionately greater than for those on higher incomes.

One can argue that Buckley is [inadvertently] being honest to a fault about a particular style of business and that is true. One can feel queasy about giving any money at all companies that pursue certain approaches to business, but for most of us there’s no choice at all. But there is worse.

What’s particularly striking is the lack of a mechanism imposed by state or by local government to oversee the provision of waste collection. What we appear to have is a situation where a private company in a very opaque manner was ‘sold’ the collection ‘business’ and now local and state government has relinquished all oversight. Waste collection companies now to exist in a context where they can pretty much do as they see fit. And so, they are doing pretty much as they see fit.

What’s most telling is how little this seems to impact at national level. The Government, and the local franchise of the Socialist International who are a part of it, seem remarkably unmoved by all this. Why?