Kerry County Council has decided to sell its refuse collection service to Killarney-based KWD Recycling. From December 5th, 2011, all customers of Kerry County Council’s refuse collection service will have their bins collected by KWD Recycling. All Kerry County Council staff involved in the refuse collection service will be redeployed across the organisation.
The refuse collection service was running at a considerable loss having accumulated losses of Eur2.6 million since 2008. “The refuse collection is heavily subsidised by Kerry County Council each year and in effect, resources are diverted from other budget areas to offset the losses in the Environmental Budget arising from the operation of this service,” explains County Manager Tom Curran. “Every effort was made to reduce our operating costs to make the service more cost effective and competitive, and to attract more customers. As a result of this between 2008 and 2011 we managed to reduce our operating costs by Eur1.3 million. However, despite this and the best efforts of our refuse crews, we continued to lose customers to private operators.”
Tom Curran also points out that new regulatory changes in the waste area will lead to increased costs in the coming years. “These increased costs would have to be borne out by our customers or by the Council itself,” he adds.