Collection of waste plastic from Irish farms is set to double this year to 6,000 tonnes, the Irish Farmers' Association said yesterday.
The plastic, used to wrap bales of silage and as sheeting for covering silage pits, is an unsightly environmental by-product of the harvest. Just under 15,000 tonnes is generated every year.
Disposal of the plastic becomes a major problem for farmers at this time of year as they let their animals out of wintering sheds and clear out their silage pits in readiness for the new silage-making season.
But yesterday the IFA's National Environment Committee chairman, Mr Francis Fanning, said the IFA and the industry-backed plastic collection and recycling scheme will this year double last year's tonnage of waste farm plastic collection to 6,000 tonnes.
He said that this year's collection target will be up 2000 tonnes on the 1999 total and will mean a 100 per cent increase in the amount of farm plastic collected since the scheme was introduced three years ago.
"By March 2001, this farmer-backed collecting and recycling scheme will have safely removed 12,000 tonnes of waste farm plastic from the environment in just over three years," he said.
"This is an achievement which farmers can be proud of and further demonstrates farmers' total commitment to a clean rural environment for the production of top quality Irish food," he said.
He asked farmers to keep waste silage sheeting and wrap as clean as possible and separately. They can book collection by phoning the Freephone number 1800300 444.
He said that waste farm plastics would then be collected by local farm relief services on behalf of Irish Farm Film Producers' Group, which operates the service within the Republic. The scheme, which is unique in Europe, is financed by the farmer paying a small levy included in the purchase cost of the sheeting and wrap. The money collected through this levy is passed on by participating companies to the IFFP, which reprocesses the material.
Farmers can be fined by local authorities for littering with the plastic sheeting and can have their Rural Environment Protection Grants cut for failing to deal with the problem.