By Michele Canning smith
ALMOST £3 million is literally being thrown on the waste heap every year in Strabane - to clean up after its citizens.
Four lorries leave the holding site at Newtownstewart every day, five days of every week, transporting 18,000 tonnes of rubbish to Lisburn.
And as if that isn't waste enough, the man tasked with sifting through the problem of Strabane's rubbish, Malcolm Scott, Chief Technical Services Officer, is warning that it's all going to get worse, unless householders dramatically change their management of waste.
If every householder fails to get to grips with their rubbish, then it will weigh heavily on their pockets, with an extra £0.5 million having to be found in the next three years.
And it's the ratepayers that are going to have to meet the cost of this mounting problem.
As it stands Strabane District Council is forking out some £1.5 million on waste disposal, almost half a million pounds on collecting your rubbish, £68,000 on collecting bulky waste, over £200,000 on civic amenity sites and over half a million in street cleansing.
The local authority currently pays landfill tax of £24 per tonne to the government.
But over the next three years that will increase to £48 per tonne and by 2010/2011 it will be forking out a staggering £48 per tonne.
And based on current and predicted waste figures, Strabane's ratepayers will exceed the district's landfill allowance in 2009/10 by 2,550 tonnes.
This in turn means that the Council will face fines of £150 per tonne and be levied an additional £40 per tonne landfill tax.
Compare that with 10 years ago - when the Council closed its landfill site at Carricklee - the cost of managing rubbish was a mere £76,000.
Householders have consistently failed to meet targets set by Malcolm Scott's team since 2005. And in this year alone - just five months in - there are already 9133 tonnes of rubbish meaning that a target of 17,800 tonnes per year is now unachievable.
On top of that, householders should be red faced that the Council is 20th (out of 26th) in the league of performance indicators of recycling through blue bins.
Introduced to Strabane in 2005 there is only some 19.3-20 per cent of rubbish recycled.
"It says a lot for Strabane," says Malcolm Scott who admits that he would be happy to get that figure up to even 25 per cent.
On average only 65 per cent of people in the district leave out the blue bin for collection, which means 35 per cent are not recycling at all. In some cases the blue bin is being used to store black bin waste until the next 'black bin' collection day.
Currently, only 4,2000 tonnes of rubbish is recycled through the blue bin scheme and the existing civic amenity sites. It's time to act.
