A councillor has said it is “scandalous” that Belfast ratepayers are paying an extra £200,000 due to “waste tourists” from outside the city driving in to use household recycling centres (HRCs).
Green Party councillor Anthony Flynn said Belfast recycling centres have seen a huge increase in waste coming from other council areas in recent months, at great cost to city ratepayers.
Anecdotal evidence suggests residents from areas such as Hollywood in North Down have been coming into East Belfast in considerable numbers to use household recycling centres in that part of the city.
This month, officials at the neighbouring Ards and North Down Borough Council said their local authority saved over £1m in landfill costs over the past year, since introducing new stricter access to its household recycling centres.
In September 2023, access to HRCs in Ards and North Down moved online in a council bid to crack down on “waste tourism” from residents in neighbouring council areas.
Councillors there agreed to introduce a new online booking system for access to its nine recycling centres, with access only possible via a pre-booked slot.
The change met some resistance from locals, with a petition on campaigning website Change.org opposing the rules receiving thousands of signatures.
From June 2023 to June 2024, Ards and North Down Borough Council saved £1,059,578 on landfill fees and taxes compared to the baseline 2021-22 reporting year.
Around £100,000 in landfill haulage cost savings were also made.
At the same time, an additional 1,300 tonnes of residual/non-recyclable waste has been accepted at Belfast’s recycling sites over the course of the last recorded year, with an estimated additional cost of handling and treatment of £194,000.
Significant increases were noted at the Palmerston Road recycling centre in east Belfast — which is not far from the Holywood centre operated by Ards and North Down Borough Council.
Green councillor Anthony Flynn said: “Belfast ratepayers are being left in a scandalous position of paying almost £200,000 additional costs to dispose of residual waste from other council areas, both domestic and commercial.
“This is happening because of Belfast City Council’s lack of updated waste acceptance criteria and no overarching waste strategy from Stormont or joined up thinking across council areas.
“All of the councils around Belfast have much more stringent waste acceptance criteria, including online booking systems. That has resulted in a huge increase in residual waste being presented at some of Belfast’s household recycling centres.
“To address this issue, I have requested a workshop for Belfast Councillors and officers to look at this problem. We will also invite representatives from Ards and North Down and Lisburn City and Castlereagh council to share their experience and assist Belfast in coming up with solutions.
“We need to look at the positive outcomes these other councils have seen from their change in policy, as well as the negatives and come up with solutions that would both be of most benefit to the Belfast ratepayer and have a minimal impact on our staff at the HRCs.”
Belfast council officers wrote in the People and Communities December report: “During the course of 2023/24, the (waste) service noted a general, downward trend in the recycling rates achieved by the council’s household waste recycling centres.
“Anecdotal evidence suggested that neighbouring councils had introduced robust access and waste acceptance policies at their recycling centres, which may have resulted in some residents either returning to their own council area to deposit waste, or indeed availing of alternative facilities which by comparison lack access and acceptance policies.
“In essence, the sector may be witnessing a shift in the location of waste disposal across council boundaries.”
They add: “An examination of the residual waste since the introduction of the Ards and North Down Borough Council online booking system indicates a 12% increase rather than the six percent annual figure, which covers the first five months of the year when no such booking system was in place.
“In addition, while the increase across all sites is 12%, there are marked increases in particular at Palmerston HWRC, which sits in close proximity to Holywood CA site operated by ANDBC.”
They state: “This growth rate of residual waste at the sites is stark, and without doubt has played a significant part in the decline in the overall recycling rate at the centres.
“Applying the growth rate for these seven months to the full year and adjusting for the normal overall waste growth rate (plus 1.5%) gives a scenario of an additional 1,300 tonnes of residual/non-recyclable waste accepted at the council’s sites over the course of a year, with an estimated additional cost of handling and treatment of £194,000.”
The report adds: “A further analysis of the van booking system for the period January to March 2024 was conducted.
“The purpose was to identify usage patterns which would be considerably greater than the average household and which may identify opportunistic individuals or organisations availing of the recycling centres to dispose of their commercial waste, and thereby avoid paying for its disposal but rather placing this burden on the Belfast rate payer.
“Over this three-month period, 156 accounts placed 6,868 bookings. These 156 accounts represented around 56% of total bookings. The range in the number of bookings was 14-246.
“Of these 156 accounts, the average number of bookings over this 13 week period was 44 occasions. These figures would suggest that the lack of formal waste acceptance policies may be leaving the recycling centres vulnerable to commercial waste abuse.”