Composters 'used for dog kennels'

A NUMBER of compost bins sent out by Moyle Council are not being used for what they were intended but instead have been adapted as coal bunkers and even dog kennels, Sinn Fein councillor Cathal Newcombe said.

He was speaking as the Council has been successful in getting funding for 3,200 new compost bins to be delivered in the Moyle area.

The scheme will be paid for through the North West Region Waste Management Group and the Council is expected to receive the composters in January or February and the bins have to be out to householders before April.

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There will be no collection of the composters but the plan is for householders to use them to get rid of grass and garden waste which can then be used as compost on the same gardens.

Council officer Aidan McPeake said the composters will only go to householders who are outside towns and villages and away from main routes.

Otherwise, he said people in towns and villages will receive new brown bins which will be for grass collections.

The Council has agreed to the scheme but DUP councillor Robert McIlroy said people in rural locations often have bigger gardens and he thought they might need brown bins but Mr McPeake said people in the country often have more available areas to dump grass for compost.

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SDLP councillor Orla Black was told by Mr McPeake that if people in towns and villages want composters they will be able to get them.

Ulster Unionist councillor Willie Graham felt it would be waste of money at a time of credit crunch to pay for a lorry and workers to pick up brown bins and he asked if people had never heard of a ‘midden’ in the middle of a garden to dump grass.

Cllr Oliver McMullan (Sinn Fein) said it would be a “wild smell” but Cllr Graham replied: “Middens were used for hundreds of years and never killed anybody yet”.

He said the proposed Council grass collection scheme was a “damned nonsense”.

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Aidan McPeake said the main reason for collecting grass in brown bins was to stop it being dumped in black bins and it was all aimed at meeting recycling targets.

He said it currently costs councils 96 per tonne of waste dumped to landfill and 25 a tonne to use a compost facility.

He warned that if targets are not met fines can follow and he said Moyle Council is currently “sitting borderline”.

Cllr McIlroy said efforts will have to be made to ensure brown bins are not left sitting outside holiday homes and second homes.

Mr McPeake said that can be quite difficult to try and monitor but he said people in such properties normally use them in the summer months.

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