Dublin City Council dumps €155,000 worth of 'completely useless' Re-turn bin surrounds
Darragh Mc Donagh
Bottle holders installed on public bins by Dublin City Council at a cost of more than €155,000 have all been removed after senior officials described them as “completely useless” and said they were causing more problems than they solved.
The bin surrounds were lauded as “another step on the journey to a cleaner and safer city” when they were launched by the local authority and Re-turn, the operator of the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), at the end of 2024.
However, internal emails show that senior council officials branded them “an eyesore” and “not fit for purpose” last month, before ordering workers to remove them from 110 public bins across the capital.
A number of options for the disposal of the bottle holders were discussed in the emails, with one staff member suggesting that workers could just “dump them” in the bins as they were removed.
The purchase and installation of the bin surrounds cost the council €155,000, with a payment of €35,609 for bottle holders and bin wrapping approved as recently as last month.
A spokesman for Re-turn claimed that the company had contributed 50% of the production and installation costs for the bin surrounds, but was completely unaware of their removal.
“The claim that Dublin City Council is removing all of the bin surrounds in the city centre is categorically incorrect,” he said.
A spokesman for Dublin City Council confirmed: “All bin surrounds have now been removed from all bins.”
Records released by the local authority under freedom of information laws show that a senior official in waste management services ordered an executive engineer to arrange for the removal of the bin surrounds on May 13.
The following day, the engineer asked staff to begin removing the surrounds, starting with the Quay and Temple Bar, “because these are the most problematic at the moment”.
“The bottle holders have been proven to be completely useless, as I know you are aware,” he wrote in an email. “We have [given] them a proper test (as we had to) but they cause more problems than they solve.
“Could you please remove them when you get an opportunity,” he added, providing details of bin locations in the city.
Other council documents noted that bin surrounds were “frequently” being used for general litter, including coffee cups and cigarette butts. “They are not fulfilling their intended function,” they added.
Last month, elected members of Dublin City Council were told that the DRS had resulted in the “coordinated misuse of public litter bins” by people scavenging for recyclable bottles and cans.
Council officials said bin-raiding had cost €857,000 since the introduction of the scheme, with additional clean-up operations alone costing €351,000 per annum.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said the latest revelation regarding the removal of €155,000 worth of bin surrounds in Dublin was “beyond the ridiculous”, and called for the DRS to be “reformed or ended”.
“First of all, we had the €500,000 annual clean-up cost in Dublin to deal with bin scavenging. Now we hear they’re getting rid of the stupid bins they put everywhere, in a hare-brained attempt to curb it. That's another €155,000 down the drain,” he said.
“No self-respecting country would put these all over their capital city. The whole purpose of a bin is to remove waste from sight, not to put it on display. Anyone could see they’d cause bigger problems than they’d solve.”
Mr Tóibín, who has called for a review of the DRS, said the Government had to make a decision in relation to the scheme. “It’s not working. The public hates it. It’s not cost-beneficial, either environmentally or economically. It needs to be reformed or ended.”
