Galway City Council is evaluating Europe's first resource recovery park, which would provide a one-stop waste recycling centre.
The concept, which has already been developed in Australia, New Zealand and the US (in California), is to treat waste as an asset, and provide for repairs and second-hand shops.
Such initiatives, if successful, can result in up to 90 per cent of waste being diverted from landfill or incineration, according to Zero Waste Alliance Ireland, which is backing the approach.
Dr Niamh Clune of the alliance said resource recovery parks are regarded as the most progressive waste management system internationally, and can provide a realistic alternative to incineration.
Galway city has pioneered new waste management practices, with 55 per cent of household waste now diverted to recycling. A new composting plant is being developed at Carrowbrowne under the Connacht Waste Management strategy.
Thermal treatment or incineration is also provided for in the Connacht strategy, but Galway city councillors recently excluded it from the new draft city development plan.
The plan commits the council to investigating resource recovery parks that do not include incineration. Dr Clune, who has worked in Africa with Oxfam, Unicef and the World Food Programme, said the recovery parks work on the principle of the local multiplier effect, where like-minded waste-exchange businesses cluster together.
"As the park develops organically, it becomes an innovative, supportive and fertile ground for new ideas on how to expand re-use, recycling and composting in an area," she said.
Craft shops sell items made from recycled materials, mulch and compost can be made and sold from garden waste, and it can become a "pleasant place to bring the whole family".
"The green industry, particularly recycling, represents the fourth largest economic power in the world, and it is the most rapidly growing," said Dr Clune. The price of recycled materials has tripled in three years. In the US alone, re-use and recycling industries support more than 56,000 enterprises, employ over a million people and generate annual revenues of $236 billion.
"Sorting and processing recyclables sustains five to 10 times more jobs than landfilling or incineration," said Dr Clune. In New Zealand, it has been estimated that 40,000 jobs will be created as waste transfer stations are converted into recovery parks.
The Green Party's Galway spokesman, Mr Niall Ó Brolcháin, said the parks provided a realistic alternative. Zero Waste Alliance Ireland is exploring the possibility of EU funding to set up a pilot project in Galway city.
Galway City Council said it had received a presentation on recovery parks, which councillors supported and which had been included in the draft development plan. However, the concept was still at "investigation" stage, and as yet there was no clear commitment to such a project.
