By Conor Sharkey

ONE third of Strabane residents are still refusing to recycle, figures out this week reveal.

The latest waste management trends, issued by the Council's Chief Technical Officer Malcolm Scott, show that 30 percent of local households are still ignoring the blue bin scheme.

Despite sustained efforts to enforce the 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' message, the amount of waste being sent to landfill is up for the third year running.

And while at present the figures are presenting a headache for Strabane Council, from next year they will also become a major financial problem for the local ratepayer.

Under targets set out in the Northern Ireland Landfill Allowance Scheme (NILAS), from 2009, councils will only be allowed to dispose of 10,725 tonnes of waste annually. Failure to meet these targets will lead to fines of £150 per tonne.

At present, Strabane sends a massive 12,788 tonnes of waste to landfill per annum. Do the calculations and from 2009, fines in excess of £250,000 are in store for the local council. And to make matters worse, the NILAS targets are set to drop year on year after 2010.

So what more can be done to change the mindset of those still refusing to acknowledge their blue bins?

Currently, around 30 percent of Strabane householders are not using the blue bins properly, with many opting instead to either ignore the scheme altogether or to simply use the blue bin as a second black one.

But recently, some local councillors sounded their opposition to on the spot fines for repeat offenders, a decision which has seriously limited the options open to the Technical Services department.

Instead, Malcolm Scott's team have been forced to continue their policy of searching through refuse, refusing to lift offending bins and sending out warning letters.

One innovation recently employed by Technical Services however is a tracking system which monitors the number of blue bins collected within various housing estates for individual days. The tracking device can be modified to track how many blue bins are left out regularly on a particular street and possibly even track how often each household empties their blue bin.

Whatever course of action is taken, it needs to be implemented quickly. From next year, Strabane District Council will start to incur massive financial penalties, penalties which will have to be clawed back via domestic rates increases.

Speaking on Tuesday night, councillor Jarlath McNulty explained: "We have been trying over the last five years to develop an understanding with the wider community on the importance of recycling. It is disappointing that we are still looking at fines because we are missing these targets.

"I am at a loss because we have carried out very pro-active campaigns on this issue. If we incur costs, then it will be reflected in the rates.

"People think they won't incur the costs, but they will and they will be penalised because we have to find the money from somewhere.

"We have a responsibility to recycle and the onus needs to be on the ratepayer, because I don't think we should be fined just because 30 percent of others can't be bothered to recycle," Mr McNulty said.