Before 2012, Ireland held a position in Europe that should have been a point of pride. We were the last country with a capital that technically still had fully municipalised public waste management. Things had already started to change, of course. The Waste Management Act of 1996 saw local authorities begin charging for rubbish collection and private operators entered the “market”. Dublin City Council quit the waste collection game in 2012.

One thing that rarely seems to happen anywhere local authorities privatise waste collection is a more coherent system. Local grievances about waste collection persist around the country – including where I live in the city, where the council wants to ban rubbish bags (which are bought in corner shops and collected) and replace them with plastic bins (which people can’t fit in their homes, because so many people live in terraced housing, many without back gardens).

Meanwhile, a few communal compactors have popped up in Dublin city, the subject of photoshoots with the Lord Mayor. Communal bins are good, but we need them everywhere across our cities, villages, towns and suburbs. Most importantly, we need them underground.

There’s no point in doing things half-right. While large street compactors help somewhat, underground bins are a much better solution. When bins are underground, the space around them is retained and street clutter is kept to a minimum.

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