County councils dumping illegally

Slow boat to India - Irish Solution to an Irish problem

In the latest leg of the race against waste, it transpired that your service charge money is being used to ship waste to India, illegally. Sorry about the cut and paste (IT - pay per view) but I thought somebody in the Fingal anti-bin tax campaign might have covered it. I suppose they were too busy watching the SF Ard Fheis.

Belgians to ship back 1,000 tonnes of illegal waste to Ireland

The Belgian authorities are to ship back to Ireland 1,000 tonnes of illegally-exported waste intercepted in the port of Antwerp. It was destined for India.

The rubbish will be shipped out of Antwerp on Thursday week, March 11st, the Belgian Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told The Irish Times yesterday.

Five local authorities supplied the rubbish: Waterford, Galway, Fingal and South Tipperary County Councils and Limerick City Council.

With Ireland as EU president, the Minister of the Environment, Mr Cullen, is to preside at an EU Council of Environment Ministers when it discusses ways to tighten rules on the shipment of waste next Tuesday.

Some 56 containers of Irish waste were being shipped to India when they were impounded by the Antwerp port police.

The police had been put on alert after 900 tonnes of waste from Ireland had earlier been stopped in Rotterdam.

What makes the shipments illegal is that they contained dirty unsorted household waste. Only uncontaminated, separated waste can be shipped from one EU country to another without prior agreement. No such permission had been given for the Rotterdam and Antwerp shipments.

Mr Marc Leemans, an inspector in the Flanders Waste Disposal service, said the 56 containers arrived at Antwerp over two weeks.

The EPA said: "There are a number of shipping companies involved - CVB Ecologistics, Beciss International, Freight Solutions and Derek Horner Agencies Ltd."

Mr Leemans said the papers accompanying the containers described their content as old paper, which did not, under existing rules, require prior authorisation.