Ireland to face difficulties meeting EU recycling targets due to disparity in measuring waste, industry bodies say

Ireland will face difficulties meeting 2025 and 2030 recycling targets set by the EU — not because the Irish are bad at recycling, but because of a wide disparity in measuring waste and resource recovery and applying the rules consistently across Europe, according to the industry.

An Environmental Protection Agency report published on Monday found only 29 per cent of plastic packaging waste was recycled in 2020, a long way off the 2025 EU target of 50 per cent. The EPA report also said the majority of Ireland’s plastic packaging waste was incinerated in 2020.

Responding to the EPA report, the Irish Waste Management Association (IWMA), Repak and e-waste recyclers WEEE Ireland all said wider issues were at play and measuring recycling by weight alone, and the way this criteria was applied, was now questionable.

The Irish Waste Management Association said Germany, for example, included garden waste in recycling figures for households, while it was not included here. Similarly, municipal authorities there included organic waste from parks which was retained in the parks as compost but was also calculated as municipal recycling. The association said the disparity impacted figures for individual recycling which showed that German citizens recycled an average of 450kg per year, against an Irish citizen’s recycling of about 333kg per year.

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IWMA spokesman Conor Walsh said because Ireland did not include tonnage of garden and municipal park waste, the tonnage per citizen was skewed. “We need to convince the EU that it is not always comparing like with like,” he said.

In relation to recycling packaging Mr Walsh said there was a need to separate recyclable plastics from non-recyclable plastics. He said the association wanted to reject any impression that collectors were burning material that was recyclable. “All recyclable packaging placed in recycling bins is recycled” he said adding that in recent years the value of recycled Pet plastics — used commonly in soft drinks bottles — had risen to €600 per tonne, as against a cost of about €120 per tonne to send them to incineration.

“Recyclable waste plastic in the correct bin is valuable, there is no incentive to incinerate it”, he said.

‘Back door waste’

Mr Walsh did say that figures could improve if municipal authorities had on street facilities for people to segregate waste, instead of single litter bins.

“We appeal for people to place recyclable packaging in recycling bins, where we will capture and recycle it. Analysis shows that a lot of good recyclable materials, such as plastic bottles and aluminium cans are placed in general waste bins rather than recycling bins where they are lost from the recycling chain” he said.

Weee Ireland, a compliance scheme for producers of waste electrical and electronic equipment noted new home technologies such as solar PV panels and heat pumps, for example, “are large tonnage items which now have a lifespan of more than 15-20 years thanks to innovation by the producers”.

“They will not reach end of life for recycling for decades and yet still count in today’s target measurements. The same has happened in lighting where long-lasting LED bulbs are changing the nature of the landscape previously dominated by short use incandescent bulbs.

“Although our percentage takeback levels are far above the European average, the distance to our mandatory 65 per cent take back target is widening every year”.

Seamus Clancy of packaging compliance scheme Repak said Ireland generated 1.1 million tonnes of packaging per year, but just some 720,000 tonnes of this was placed on the market. Some 400,000 tonnes of this was “back door waste” generated in the production process. In the past he said some European countries counted only what was placed on the market, but Ireland used the “generated” figure. While he said Europe was moving to the “generated” figure, “it needs to be applied consistently in future” he said.