South Dublin County Council Put their Environmental Policy in the Bin

dublin | environment | news report Wednesday March 14, 2007 15:53 by Paula Geraghty mspgeraghty at yahoo dot ie

Outsourcing and privatization hurts our environment.

A quick visit to South Dublin County Council offices in Tallaght reveal a lack of public recycling facilities, facilitated by one of the largest catering groups in the world.
They sell fairtrade coffee by Starbucks too.

The infamous multinational coffee chain Starbucks has been introduced coffee shop at South Dublin County Council Head Offices at the Square in Tallaght. Pricier than the staff canteen, many staff members choose to avoid it. The unsuspecting public aren’t so lucky. Starbucks also have leaflets promoting their FairTrade produce. Not only must the public face the corporatisation of the public service, but there is the added insult of ethical trading from a multinational who has a terrible record on trade union rights.

However it’s not a Starbucks coffee shop.

Management Catering part of the Compass Catering Group provide catering services in South Dublin County Council using Starbucks coffee. Compass Catering Group is the largest food service company in the world with revenues of €11billion.
On it’s website it claims that the “Compass Group is fully aware of its responsibilities within the worldwide communities in which it operates” (1). Compass is based in Dublin at Park West with a turnover of €85 million by the end of 2005 with a total of 1785 employees, while Management Catering is based at Clonskeagh Road (2).

There have been allegations of insider knowledge being used to assist the Compass group to gain contracts with the UN in Russia a number of years ago. This caused a dip in share price to 175p to day it has risen to 309p per share (3).

South Dublin County Council promote on their Education and Awareness for Business page the following:
“Small changes
It is now easier than ever to do your bit towards caring for the environment and building a cleaner future. Good waste management practice saves money and can also improve staff moral.
It's simple. If we all reduce the amount of rubbish we produce, reuse more of the products we already have and recycle as much as possible, we will dramatically reduce our waste levels - a crucial goal for Ireland's environmental health.(4)”

However they appear to have an inability to implement their own policy within their own HQ. Much of the coffee, in the Starbucks/Compass outlet, is served in disposable containers with the paper holders and disposed where? No green bins insight nor were food waste composters. Food, empty plastic milk cartons, coffee, teabags and other waste food were all seen to go in the same black plastic sack.

It's a little different for the staff-recycling facilities have been introduced in the staff canteen area, so staff can separate plastics and food, and the council intend on targeting the public area soon. A spokesperson from SDDC Corporate services said the priority was to introduce segregation of food waste in the staff canteen, which has started and has been successful. Another spokesperson said they are keen to implement the policy in the public area.

"In Ireland one ton of waste is generated per household per year. Choose products made from recycled materials (From SDCC site).” While some of the materials, from Starbucks, used are recyclable they are not actually recycled nor any provision made to enable the public to recycle.
Also from SDCC’s website. “The time to act is now. Almost 2.3 million tones of household and commercial waste were generated in Ireland in 2001 - an increase of almost a third in three years. We cannot sustain this. It places severe pressure on our environment and our waste management services - landfill is the main waste disposal route but we are running out of landfill space.”

Talk is cheap, if South Dublin County Council were actually serious about waste reduction they should take a good look at their own record on environmental and ultimately human rights.

Other information on Starbucks:
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/73154 http://www.indymedia.ie/openwire?search_text=Starbucks&...2&y=0
Starbucks and social responsibility, from their own site
http://www.starbucks.com/csrnewsletter/csrNGO.asp
Starbucks Fairtrade Policy
http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/StarbucksAndFairTrade.pdf
Issues highlighted by Eric Byrne that Starbucks is associated with Guantanamo http://ericbyrne.blogspot.com/2006/06/boycotting-starbu....html
Fairtrade fortnight is now over!
http://www.fairtrade.ie/

1 http://www.compass-group.com/
2http://www.businessworld.ie/coys/details.htm?u=1026 http://www.businessworld.ie/cd/Top1000/NormalDetails/37...7.htm
3 http://newsfromrussia.com/economics/2005/10/21/65860.html
4http://environment.southdublin.ie/index.php?option=com_...d=138