Minister's warning over landfills
Landfills must become the last resort in dealing with waste, a Government minister insisted today.
Minister for the Environment Dick Roche said 80% of material such as wood, paper and kitchen waste should be diverted from rubbish dumps by 2016 as he launched the National Strategy on Biodegradable Waste.
“Landfill has always been our first reaction to dealing with biodegradable municipal waste. Now it must become our last resort,” he said.
“The last number of years have seen dramatic progress in improving our recycling performance with more households having separate collections for dry recyclables, more bring banks and recycling centres.
“We now need to build on that success by diverting more and more biodegradable municipal waste – that’s wood, paper and textiles as well garden and kitchen waste arising in the home or the workplace – from landfill over the next decade.
“The strategy being launched here today provides a blueprint for how this can be achieved.”
Mr Roche said the target of 80% diversion from rubbish dumps – an increase from 630,000 tonnes diversion to 1.8 million tonnes in a decade – was going to be difficult to achieve.
“The challenge involved in meeting these targets is great and will require a concerted effort on everyone’s part if are to succeed,” he added.
He said the preferred options for dealing with biodegradable municipal waste are:
:: Prevention and minimisation – avoiding generating the waste;
:: Recycling – mainly of paper and cardboard but also of textiles;
:: Biological treatment – mainly of kitchen and garden waste including composting;
:: Residual treatment – thermal treatment with energy recovery or by way of mechanical-biological treatment.
“We are facing a situation where we must increase the amount of houses where people engage in home composting from 10% to 40%, the amount of paper and cardboard we recover and recycle must increase from about 46% to 67% and virtually a four-fold increase in the quantity of waste subject to biological treatment is required,” the minister said.
“We will need more segregated collection of waste, the introduction of ‘brown bin’ collection services for kitchen and garden waste from householders where possible and segregated collection of these wastes from businesses must become the norm.
“This may look like an insurmountable challenge but I am optimistic on the basis of past performance that it can be done.
“Who would have believed a few years ago that we would be recycling a third of our municipal waste and more than half our packaging waste?
“The people of Ireland have shown that given the opportunity, the information and the facilities, that they are committed to making recycling a success.”
