One of Dublin city’s most senior environment officials has said he is “sick of people telling me the city is filthy” and has urged Dubliners to take some personal responsibility for the waste they produce.Derek Kelly, executive manager of the council’s climate division, has also advised people in smaller homes to consider using new 45-litre waste caddies being offered to them if their properties aren’t big enough for wheelie bins. The council plans to press ahead with a ban on the presentation of plastic bags on streets in Dublin 7 in October, but Kelly said householders will face fines if they leave wheelie bins on the footpath outside designated collection times. From September, fines will increase to €250.[ Dublin ‘bin ban’ roll-out delayed in Phibsborough, Broadstone and StoneybatterOpens in new window ]The council recently made significant investment in waste management services, spending more than €4 million this year on a new road sweeper fleet and doubling the area covered by a 24-hour cleaning regime, he said.In response to the recent hosepipe ban, the council has scaled back street washing, but Kelly said it was continuing to remove litter and empty the city’s 3,500 bins at least once a day and up to eight times daily in heavily trafficked areas.However, he said “civic pride” needed to be encouraged. “I’m sick of people telling me the city is filthy. Yes, it can be filthy at times, but we’re doing so much, and cleanliness is for a moment in time. Two seconds later, somebody can destroy a street, and that can happen to Grafton Street; it can happen anywhere,” Kelly told city councillors at a meeting this week.“The public have a huge part to play, and we really need to get that higher on people’s agenda”.Green Party Cllr Claire Byrne asked why communal bins in use in the city centre could not be deployed in the inner suburbs where a ban on the use of bin bags is imminent.The council has already banned the on-street presentation of plastic bags in most of the south and north inner city and had planned to extend the ban to Dublin 7 in July, but has extended permission for their use until October.Legislation requiring the use of bins instead of refuse sacks came into force in 2016, but thousands of Dublin residents and businesses were given a temporary derogation from the rule because their properties were unsuitable for wheelie bins.While only two waste collection firms operated in the inner city, Kelly said, about 50 operated in the suburbs, which made the use of communal bins problematic. Alternatives to large wheelie bins were being offered by waste collectors, including smaller wheelie bins and 45-litre caddies which were “about the size of a shopping basket”. For many, he said, these could provide a better option than storing waste bags in their homes until collection day.People who opted for wheelie bins would not be permitted to leave them on the street outside collection times, he said.“There’s a presentation window,” he said. “If people leave them out, they will be fined. The public street is not the place to store them; it’s the place to present them for collection, and then you must take them in.”Council staff could not continue to clean up the mess from ripped bags, he said. “We can’t do the day job, because we’re responding to domestic waste being ripped open, because the presenter thinks their job is done when they put it on the curb and now it’s the waste collector’s waste. It actually isn’t. It’s your waste until it goes into the back of that truck.”The council has tried its best to come up with a workable solution, he said. “There’s no perfect solution, and if we’re looking for the perfect, we’ll get nothing”.