New laws on food waste to come into effect will be a 'game changer', Cork councillor says

New legislation signed by the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan will be a "game changer for Cork City Council" a councillor has said.

Every household in the State will be provided with a brown bin for food waste and light garden waste by their waste collector.

With the legislation comes new regulations from the EU, which will see waste collectors keeping records of how much people are using their new bins.

The European Union (Household Food Waste and Bio-waste) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which come into effect on 31 December 2023, introduce a number of new requirements, such as that all households will now be obliged to segregate their food and garden waste and either have them collected by an authorised collector, compost the food waste or bring the food waste to an authorised facility.

Waste collectors will be obliged to keep records of customers not availing of a food waste collection service and to make this information available to the relevant local authority on request, and households not availing of a food waste service will be required to notify their collector in writing.

Green Party councillor for Cork City South-Central Dan Boyle explained that the responsibility for ensuring that these regulations are being upheld will lie with the 31 local councils in Ireland.

“The local authority already has power to do spot checks or call into households,” he said.

With regards to people who manage their own waste disposal, he said that no penalties will apply, once they can prove that they have another system in place.

“If you can show that you’re composting, or if you take your recycling to a civic amenity site, you should get receipt - if you have a number of those receipts that will show that you’re disposing of your waste responsibly.” 

His party colleague, Cork City North-East councillor Oliver Moran, explained that the laws mean that Cork City Council can now request a list of customers from waste collection companies.

“If a household is noticed to be missing from the list they can be approach directly about how they are disposing of their waste. For those households without commercial services and who are dumping or fly-tipping, this is going to be a game changer for Cork City Council.

“It will take about six months to get everything in place that's necessary to enforce the waste bye-laws this way, but once ready, officials intend to go hell-for-leather to combat fly-tipping and illegal dumping.

"The same set of laws that is enabling this approach also clears up the situation with using CCTV to catch fly-tippers as well, which is also something long demanded by local communities blighted by fly-tippers,” Mr Moran added.