I am living in Dublin 5 (DCC) and they are trialling the bins in 8000 houses. In my area they are trialling them in some roads/areas of Clontarf and Artane. We did'nt get one but my mother in law did.
It is for food and garden waste. Useful for grass cuttings, etc, but I personally don't like the idea of putting foodstuffs in them. Basically, the collection alternates each week between the black bin and the brown bin i.e. each bin (black & brown) bin gets collected now once every 2 weeks.
You cannot put any kind of plastic bags, etc in the brown bin. You have to line the bottom of the bin with card or newspaper and wrap the foodtuffs in it too. I have no doubt it will be extended across the city after the trials.
There was a lot of media coverage about it over the Summer as the lids on the brown bins were not airtight and flies were getting in and laying eggs and people were finding their bins crawling with maggots - yuck.
C