9 Upper Mount Street, Dublin 2.
Phone: 01 6425741
E-mail: avoice@iol.ie

Take waste Down to Zero

...(or very close)

Down to Zero is a positive, sustainable waste campaign organised by VOICE. Down to Zero is supported by Zero Waste Alliance Ireland; an initiative by individuals, communities, local and national groups working towards sustainable waste management.

Anyone who says that 'modern' incinerators are safe is misinformed. Sometimes referred to, as 'thermal treatment', incineration is nothing more than an indoor waste furnace. Incineration cannot make waste magically disappear; it merely converts waste into a cocktail of chemicals that are linked with cancer, asthma and birth defects. Acid gases, arsenic, lead, dioxins and particulates spew out of large incinerators chimneys at the rate of 80 wheelie bins per second. Incineration reduces waste down to thousands of tones of toxic ash that requires landfill.

The majority of people in Ireland have consistently said they want more door-to-door (kerbside) collection of recycling and compost along with greater responsibility from the 'producers' of waste. VOICE along with a local groups and communities nationwide are calling on Minster for the Environment to fully implement the prevention, minimisation, reuse, and recycling elements of national waste strategy. These measures would make incineration unnecessary and 'super dumps' a thing of the past.

Tell the Minister for the Environment you want maximum recycling and composting not mass incineration. Cast your VOTE on waste.

Current Situation in Ireland

Ireland has a waste management crisis. In 2001, according to the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the total quantity of municipal waste (household, commercial and street cleansing waste) has increased by 46% in 6 years from 1995 to 2001. At this rate, the quantity of municipal waste generated will double every 10 years approximatively.

The generation of household waste represents an average of 375 kg per person. This has at the same time increased by more than 13%. At this rate, the household waste arising per person will double every 17 years.

The is easy to understand but not to deal with. We are producing more and more waste at an alarming rate.

Waste treatment in Ireland has relied fundamentally on landfilling. But landfill sites around the country are rapidly filling up, no-one wants either new landfills or incinerators, and backyard burning is highly polluting, generating three quarters of the dioxin emissions in Ireland today.

This is obviously not sustainable as it places severe pressures on the environment and the poor existing waste management infrastructures.

The Waste Working Group

The Waste Working Group was a coalition of environmental groups including VOICE, Earthwatch and other concerned individuals. It was formed to bring together people with similar ideas to promote a sustainable approach to waste-resource management, in response to the growing challenge of managing waste in Ireland. The Waste Working Group published the Sustainable Waste Resource Management Guide.

Sustainable Waste Resource Management
- guide for Local Authorities

This report presents approaches to waste management from an international perspective. It emphasises the importance of sustainability in any strategy for dealing with waste. It provides guidelines and give real examples of how waste can be treated as a resource, rather than as a crisis to be dealt with in the short term. The handbook was written for local authorities in particular but it also emphasises that everyone involved in the management of waste including industry and government should be committed to sustainability.

Each chapter of the guide has been converted to Adobe PDF format. You can read them online or save them for later reading by right-clicking on the links.

Introduction 75kb Chapter Three 90kb

Chapter One 130kb Chapter Four 120kb

Chapter Two63kb Chapter Five 130kb

Submissions made to Local Authorities by the Waste Working Group

The Waste Working Group also contributed to the waste management planning process by making comprehensive submissions, on a nation-wide basis, to local authority plans for waste management.
Click on the links to read the submissions online. The original versions can also be read or downloaded in Microsoft Word (.doc) format.

Dublin	Word (51kb)
Connaught	Word (451kb)
Donegal	Word (399kb)
Kildare	Word (400kb)
Limerick, Clare and Kerry	Word (134kb)
The Midlands	Word (141kb)
The North-East	Word (124kb)
Wicklow	Word (94kb)