The Circular Economy

Recycling means any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials or substances whether for the original or other purposes. It includes the reprocessing of organic material but does not include energy recovery and the reprocessing into materials that are to be used as fuels or for backfilling operations.

Information on recyclable waste is available on mywaste.ie. Information on waste operators is available at iwma.ie.

Recycling – Deposit Return Scheme

Ireland is in danger of missing the 50% plastic and aluminium packaging recycling rate required by the EU by 2025 and the 2030 targets of 55% for plastic and 60% for aluminium. To tackle the shortfall, the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications have launched a Deposit Return Scheme for plastic bottles of up to three litres in volume and for aluminium cans. Find out more on the Re-turn website.

The Deposit Return Scheme should assist us in meeting the 2025 recycling targets. However, it should be remembered that these are percentage recycling targets. Thus, by 2025 we must recycle 50% of the aluminium packaging we generate regardless of whether we generated one million or ten million tonnes. There are emissions involved in the production, management and recycling of each tonne of materials and so to achieve true environmental benefit we should aim to reduce the overall amount of waste we generate.

Recycling - Metals

The benefit of aluminium recycling over plastic recycling is that aluminium is a pure stream and can be recycled over and over again because it is melted and reformed without any loss of quality. Contamination of aluminium packaging with food or other products is not difficult to manage because it burns off in the melting process. In addition, recycling aluminium saves about 95% of the energy used to make aluminium from raw materials. 

We know from EPA’s Municipal Waste Characterisation Studies that there is additional metal in the residual waste bins of households and businesses. Some material recovery facilities can identify and segregate certain types of metals in the residual waste bin and then send it on for recycling.  

Plastic Recycling

Plastic can be recycled; however there are a number of key challenges to high quality plastic recycling.  Therefore, there tends to be a limit on the number of recycling loops it can go through because of cross contamination from the many different types of plastics and contamination due to product residues.  This leads to plastic downcycling and loss to the recycling loop.

The energy demand from recycled PVC plastics, such as plastic pipes and their fittings, is typically between 45% to 90% lower compared to its production from virgin raw materials. Recycling polyethylene terephthalates (PET) such as beverage bottles and similar plastics saves 83% of energy and 70% of CO2 emissions compared to PET produced from virgin materials. Contact your waste bin provider for a complete list.

Plastic energy recovery

Plastic that is not recycled is sent for energy recovery. Energy recovery means that the heat from incinerating waste is captured to generate energy. Any increase in plastic going for incineration has implications for carbon emissions - for every tonne of plastic incinerated at energy recovery plants, 2.7t CO2 is released into the atmosphere (European Environment Agency).

Furthermore, capacity for waste incineration has been mentioned as one (of many) barriers to the transition towards a more circular economy by the EEA State of the environment report 2015 (EEA, 2015) and the European Commission’s Circular Economy Action Plan (EC, 2015). See: Plastics, the circular economy and Europe′s environment — European Environment Agency (europa.eu).

Plastic Bag Tax

The plastic bag tax was a litter prevention initiative introduced in 2002.  The levy, collected by the Irish Tax Office (Revenue), is charged at the till when a customer uses single use plastic carrier bags. Revenue pays the levy proceeds into the Circular Economy fund, which finances initiatives to reduce waste and promote the reuse and recycling of goods. The result was a 95% reduction in the consumption of single use plastic carrier bags. People now use lots of different types of reusable shopping bags. Further details here.

Household waste includes residual waste, recyclable waste and organic waste collected directly from households and it includes waste brought by householders to waste collection centres such as bring banks, civic amenity sites, pay to use compactors and landfills. Check out Household Waste Statistics for Ireland for the latest figures on household waste generated, managed and unmanaged.

The EPA analyse the amounts and types of municipal waste collected at kerbside. The percentage of textiles included in municipal waste can be seen here.

Disposal codes categorise the various types of waste disposal. These codes are used by the National Waste Statistics team at the EPA to track and report on the treatment of waste in Ireland.