Having to book to use the recycling centre is a pointless nuisance but as soon as one council in Northern Ireland introduced it, the rest were bound to fall like dominoes.
Ards and North Down brought in a booking system last year. Council officials claimed it was to reduce “waste tourism”, partly caused by surrounding areas requiring proof of residence.
Now officials at Belfast City Council inevitably want to do the same.
They are complaining of a rise in waste tourism partly caused by displaced dumping from Ards and North Down – custom is up 21 per cent at the adjacent recycling centre in east Belfast.
Councillors on the relevant committee have been briefed that this is costing almost £200,000 a year. Green Party councillor Anthony Flynn told the BBC it is a “scandalous” burden on ratepayers, which it is, if you perceive our councils as 11 warring kingdoms.
Personally, as a Belfast resident, I have no objection to paying to dispose of rubbish from up the road, as I will end up paying for it anyway, one way or another.
I am more concerned about the multiples of this amount the council carves up every year in ‘community funding’ for the usual suspects.
Northern Ireland’s six eastern councils are in a waste management partnership, known as Arc 21.
They should be using that to cooperate on behalf of residents, letting people use each other’s facilities, instead of setting up bin borders.
Even the short-sighted savings being promised are far from guaranteed. The Ards and North Down system has an extra staffing cost of £260,000, to serve a population less than half that of Belfast.
Other claims made for its impact are equally debatable.
Officials at Bangor Town Hall briefed councillors earlier this year that the scheme had led to an 11 per cent drop in waste received during its first quarter of operation.
However, two of the three months of that quarter were before the scheme was introduced and the comparison was to a quarter two years previously.
When officials began pushing for the Ards and North Down system, they assured councillors and residents there would be no increase in fly-tipping, citing a 2022 UK government study that found councils in England with similar schemes have “not identified any evidence of a link”.
In reality, that study found councils could neither prove nor disprove a link, due to complications such as booking systems being introduced during the pandemic. This assurance is still prominently displayed on the Ards and North Down council website.
Another issue with the system is that it assumes residents have a car – the booking website and phone line demand a vehicle registration. Over a third of households in Belfast do not have access to a car or van.
Pressed on what problem this solution is trying to solve, officials in Belfast have burbled on about reducing waiting times at recycling centres. What evidence is there this is a problem, let alone a public concern?
Ultimately, this might all be considered a minor inconvenience and wearily accepted as just more bureaucratic control-freakery.
Belfast’s recycling centres are excellent and a pleasure to use, so of course council managers cannot leave well enough alone.
North Down residents who exceed average trips to the dump – when clearing out a deceased relative’s house, for example – are sent a scolding letter and forced to beg for extra slots. Permission is almost always immediately granted. Sending the scolding letter is the point.
As for the pre-ordained public consultation exercise Belfast City Council is clearly gearing up for, that is a cynical flaw it shares with all layers of government.
But there is a more serious concern about this petty authoritarianism.
Recycling centres in Belfast have had to abandon attempts to charge vans leaving commercial waste. Staff received too much abuse, including threats of violence.
Any discussion of waste in Belfast is a parlour game while industrial levels of illegal dumping are tolerated on the hills above the city, most of it caused by a small number of easily-identifiable culprits.
Although some of this invokes issues outside the council’s remit, that is why it usually forms multi-agency task forces or why councillors appeal for action from Stormont or the police.
Pestering law-abiding citizens can be a displacement activity for bureaucracies too weak or inept to confront lawlessness and thuggery.
That flaw also extends to all layers of government in Northern Ireland.