Recycling Companies To Increase Rip-Off Rates In Revenge For Return Scheme
Private waste companies in the Twenty-Six Counties are promising to increase their already extortionate bin charges, targeting already hard-pressed families in the middle of a cost of living crisis, because they say the recently introduced deposit return scheme is eating into their profits.
These companies are claiming that the scheme, first introduced in the Twenty-Six Counties on the 1st of February this year, is depriving them of valuable recyclable material. This material is highly profitable to these companies, with the Irish Independent reporting that PET plastic bottles are worth around €500 per-tonne, while aluminium cans can fetch around €800 to €1,400 per-tonne on the open market.
In other words, these companies charge extortionate rates to collect recyclable waste from households, they then sell the material they have collected on to the highest bidder - profiting twice at the expense of these households.
These same companies now plan to hike up their already extortionate rates in revenge for people partaking in this government introduced scheme - but why should already hard-pressed households be forced to subsidise the profits of these private waste companies?
The privatisation of residential waste services in the Twenty-Six Counties has been a disaster for workers, communities, and the environment.
The privatisation of these services was strongly opposed by communities and political activists when it first started. At the time we warned that it would ultimately lead to a spiral of increasing charges for residents as a handful of private companies colluded to increase their collective profit margins.
It was also forewarned that these private companies were primarily motivated by profit not any environmental concern, and it was only a matter of time before these two objectives came into conflict with each other. That time has now come to pass.
Éirígí For A New Republic firmly believes in properly funding robust and efficient public services - not in subsidising private companies. The sooner the service is returned to democratically controlled local authorities, the better.