John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

I was stopped short in my reply to Deputy Tuffy.

The black bag and the grey bin are very important. I believe we can do much better with regard to unsegregated waste by investing in MBT, mechanical biological treatment of waste. I had the opportunity to visit an excellent MBT plant in Austria. An MBT plant should be located at every landfill site. This is low technology rather than high technology. The waste is sorted and treated and the amount of waste can be substantially reduced. The most important point is that what goes into the landfill is then inert. This procedure takes about 12 weeks to allow the waste become inert and for the water content to be sufficiently low to avoid leachate. All metals can be removed. The most important factor in order to comply with the landfill directive is to deal with the biological fraction of the waste stream. That is why it is so important that brown bins be distributed. The local authorities must do that. It would make an enormous difference.

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