New fleet and 100 extra staff as Dublin City Council unveils expanded street cleaning regime
Dublin City Council (DCC) is expanding its street cleaning regime, with new vehicles, an increased 24-hour cleaning area and additional staff.
The changes have added 100 people to DCC’s waste management roster, bringing it to 540 personnel, the final 40 of which began working in July.
These new staff have been assigned to the city centre area, with officials hoping that Dublin will soon rank among the cleanest capitals in Europe.
Other new hires will make up a new rapid response team which tackles urgent waste-related issues.
In addition, the council’s fleet of cleaning vehicles is being expanded at a cost of €8.5m.
The spend has gone on 22 new compact sweeper machines, 5 new heavy goods vehicles, new wash vans, the replacement of 60 side loader bin lorries – half of which will be electric – 27 new hand vac mechanical sweepers and new cycle lane sweepers.
The majority of the new vehicles have already been added to the fleet, but the side loader bin lorry delivery is expected in the coming months.
A council spokesperson said it would soon be “commencing the procurement process to replace our large street sweepers”.
Another change is an expansion of the city centre zone that receives 24-hour attention from cleaning staff.
This brings areas like St Patrick’s Cathedral, Iveagh Gardens Park and St George’s Church into the zone that receives around-the-clock cleaning.
This change was implemented last month once new staff were onboarded and trained up.
Six new litter wardens have also been hired, with a new night patrol service rolling out as part of this.
Derek Kelly, DCC’s head of environment, said the new measures were about showing Dubliners the council is stepping up its street-cleaning efforts.
“I’m happy that we [DCC] can do better, but I think the public needs to recognise that they can do better as well. I think that’s really important,” he said.
“There’s over 3,000 litter bins in the city, there’s never one too far away.”
Mr Kelly said the ultimate goal was to bring Dublin in line with the cleanliness standards of capital cities like Oslo and Helsinki, often ranked among the top performing cities in litter rankings.
“We have a bit to go, but I think the investment in people, in plant, in our campaigns to get the city on side, will certainly bring us a lot of the way there,” he said.
Barry Woods, DCC’s Head of Waste Management, said the success of the cleanliness push will be measured by several metrics.
“Public opinion would be one, and we’re also subject to a number of IBAL [Irish Business Against Litter] studies during the year, so we would hope to see an improvement there.”
He added that audits would also be performed by in-house inspectors for the council.
The latest IBAL survey from June of this year found that Dublin’s north inner city was the dirtiest in the country, falling into the ‘seriously littered’ category.
Dublin city centre was classified as ‘moderately littered’.