Ireland will miss EU targets on recycling unless changes are made to our waste industry, a new study has found.
The Environmental Protection Agency report showed that municipal waste recycling in Ireland stood at 41 per cent, far lower than the 55 per cent needed by 2025.
The report also found that just under 28 per cent of plastic packaging generated in Ireland was recycled in 2021.
Ireland remains “overly reliant on unpredictable export markets”, with almost 382,000 tonnes of residual waste sent for incineration abroad, the report said.
The report, released on Monday night, shows that construction and demolition waste increased by 10 per cent to 9 million tonnes and packaging waste is up by 9 per cent to 1.2 million tonnes.
David Flynn, director of the EPA’s office of environmental sustainability, said: “We continue to throw away far too much, wasting valuable materials. We live on a resource-finite planet and resource extraction causes greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss and water stress”.
“To reduce these impacts, we must accelerate our transition from a linear economy to a circular, more resource-efficient economy. Right now, we need to focus on avoiding waste. That means reusing construction waste materials where possible, becoming better at segregating our municipal waste and vastly improving the recycling of packaging materials,” he said.
