Someone told me a story last week and as well as thinking it was downright hilarious, it gave me some food for thought.
They explained to me that they bought a miniature fan, from the Pound Shop, for €2. They went back to their desk, excited about anticipated surge in cool air, when alas, the fan stopped working after precisely 12 minutes, and proceeded to fall apart before her very eyes.
“Bring it back,” I said.
“I’m not bringing something back to the pound shop,” she replied. “You get what you pay for.”
The same premise works in my industry. If you look hard enough, you’ll find a lot of people offering relatively cheap waste collection – you know the type, a chap with a van who’ll come around to your garden and take away that old table and chairs, and 25 year old Television that has since become a home for worms. They are usually nice and obliging and nothing is to much trouble and best of all half the price of all “the others”.
The fact of the matter is that waste disposal is not cheap, when you do it legally. Waste facilities charge a premium for every piece of rubbish that we drop off and in many cases, this cost will make up approximately 65% of the price that Kollect will charge. However, you know for a fact that when we collect your rubbish, it’s not going to end up in a ditch at the side of some country road, or up in the Comeragh Mountains.
Think about it, before we have even told you the cost of getting a waste collection permit, team of two trained waste experts , fit for purpose van, responsible disposal, insurance etc, you know that the cost of the “man with a van” (Note: we are not referring to any legitimate Man with a Van company, of which there are many), couldn’t possibly cover the legal dumping of your goods.
And let’s call a spade a spade here. If they’re cutting that corner, then they probably don’t have their permit either, which means that the second you give them your rubbish, you are in fact, illegally dumping your waste and could be liable for a hefty fine.
And just to update you about the fan, she ended up buying a proper one for €15 and she doesn’t anticipate it falling apart anytime in the next 15 years.
