The 3 Ages of the Bin

national | bin tax / household tax / water tax | opinion/analysis Monday December 08, 2003 02:30 by seedot - links and more info available seedot at eircom dot net

A legal analysis of the BIN

Tells the story of the bin in 3 acts - Past present and future.

The origin of the bin and where the right to have your bin collected came from, how after 175 years this right has been taken away and a comment on whats next for the BIn

It's the result of some legal research around the bin tax (thanks D) and links to the Article 133 material.

Collect All Bins - Restore the Act - Protect our environment

The situation in Irish Law

The first Age of the Bin - The Origins.

In the 1870’s in British cities there was a problem with Cholera. As a solution to this and other public health issues, the government of the day passed the 1875 Public Health Act which, amongst other public health measures relating to things like sewers etc., stated:

s. 52 - the local authority "may, and when required by order of the Local Government Board shall, themselves undertake or contract for" a number of things. The first one is "the removal of house refuse from premises". Also on that list are the cleaning of ashpits, streets etc. S. 54 says the authority may make bylaws regulating refuse collection - and s. 53 allows you to seek compensation from the authority if they undertake to collect and don't.

Actually the numbers are not from the 1875 act. This act, in a fit of generosity from the London Government, explicitly did not apply to Ireland or Scotland. It took 3 years of lobbying, mainly by Irish doctors before the 1878 Public Health Act (Ireland) gave the same rights here – the right to have your refuse collected as long as it was ‘presented’ to the council i.e. put in a bin outside your door.

This was a rational, progressive solution to the state of the cities, a move into the ‘modern world’. For 175 years people in the cities of Ireland had the right to have their refuse collected, initially through the 1878 act which was replaced by the 1996 Waste Management Act. It was a sensible, civilised approach to ensuring a healthy urban environment that in general worked. As other countries achieved wealth it was an early provision they copied.

Through a combination of legal (Local Government (Financial Provisions) (No. 2) Act 1983 and the rushed 2000 amendments to these to include bins) and political (city managers anyone?) chicanery, bin taxes were introduced. Campaigns were organised to resist these charges and the right to have your bins collected was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2001. Whatever about the charges,a bin was a bin and the legal thing, the healthy thing, the best thing was to collect them all.

The second age of the Bin - the present

But those who represent us did not give up. In 2000 they had rushed an amendment to the LA (Fin. Provisions) act through in one day to close a loophole that they had discovered while planning PPP’s. No doubts, no equivocation, they had to change the law to enable privatisation. Then, in 2003, they changed the law again to force through non-collection and, ultimately, attempt to break a growing campaign of non-payment. The 2003 Environment Act affected the bin in two ways:
it changed the law so that bins didn’t have to be collected if charges hadn’t been paid. They would be left with the householders, to build up and recreate the public health menace that was dealt with in 1878.
It removed the power over waste management – both on charges and who runs it, from the council and to the unelected County / City manager. We, the public cannot decide what our bin policy is any more.

So, that’s where we are today – that’s what the campaign is dealing with. A policy, sold as an ‘environmental policy’ which has at all times been designed to facilitate privatisation and has had the unfortunate effect of removing some of the most important public health and urban environment safeguards that were introduced by the Victorians – as they tried to deal with developing world standards of mortality and disease. A government who will twist and change the law to remove control of public policy from the public.

There may be constitutional issues here, (Bodily Integrity springs to mind) but, legally it’s a stitch up. The Bin, as a legal entity has now been moved to an optional extra.

The situation in International Law

The third age of the Bin - the future?

What affects Ireland's bins is the EU and the WTO. Both of them because we sign Treaties which can override our national law. But in the most recent treaty we signed, Nice, there was a change in how the Bin is treated internationally. Previously we decided what our policy was on waste management. Now, through the changes to Article 133, these were decided for us, with no national oversight.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article133

Just as national government removed the power over bins from local government, now the EU wide policy on waste management was removed from national governments and given to the Article 133 cttee. Tony Joyce is the Irish voice on this committee.

At least there’s an Irish voice. Well actually, it doesn’t do much good, because the government won’t even tell us what Tony Joyce says at the article 133 meetings, or what any one else says. This is not just removing control, this is hiding policy formation away. Things like Freedom of Information don’t apply. When an FOI request was put in by Attac – they were told that it was not information that could be given out, since it was ‘Commercially Sensitive’.

Now, if there are no plans to privatise – where does the ‘commercially sensitive’ bit come in?

So, the third age of the bin – secret back room meetings, hidden away from public gaze, between private companies and bureaucrats. And in 5 or 10 years time, when the GATS round is complete and there’s a campaign to keep the bin service public we’ll only then be told – oh actually we traded the liberalisation of bins so that others would allow the ESB to sell electricity to them. Rubbish on our streets traded for blackouts elsewhere. The third age of the Bin as it becomes another product that, if we’re lucky, we can consume.