Repak: ‘Plastic use attitudes must change’
Ireland’s hopes of achieving new EU targets for plastic recycling will require “a major attitudinal change within society”, similar to the plastic bag tax or the smoking ban.
A report by Repak outlined the scale of the challenge after the European Commission (EC) published its European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy last January, requiring all member states to reuse and recycle 50% of all plastic packaging waste by 2025 and 55% by 2030.
In 2016, more than 98,000 tonnes of plastic were recycled — 36% of the total estimated 275,510 tonnes of waste plastic packaging generated in Ireland.
To meet the new targets, waste plastic packaging recycling in Ireland will have to increase to around 175,824 tonnes over the next 12 years.
In its Plastic Packaging Recycling Strategy 2018-2030 report, Repak said that 20% of plastics here are still ending up in landfill or incineration while 87,000 tonnes of contaminated material is still ending up in the recycling bin — which prevents it from being recycled.
Repak said there are two phases in meeting the EU targets: one covering the next two years and then the decade to 2030.
A number of urgent measures are needed between now and 2020, including identifying where to capture additional plastic packaging waste for recycling and conducting a study to identify what collection system or combination of collection systems (including deposit refund) works best to achieve reuse and recycling targets. Repak said there are significant data gaps at present, including on plastic packaging waste reuse.
In order to achieve targets, plastic packaging will need to be extracted from waste sent to landfill and energy recovery,” it said. “This will be where the main cost of implementing the EC plastic vision will be borne.
The report added that Brexit is “a current unknown quantity” that might affect the movement of waste.
Targets for the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment include possible revision to waste collection permits or bylaws to improve collection of segregated plastics and assessing the impact of an energy recovery levy on recycling targets.
The appendix of the report contains responses from those consulted. It includes manufacturers wanting a fee clawback for retailers and producers who meet recyclability targets on plastics, waste collectors wanting a “fiscal incentive implemented for recycling plastic packaging”, and a belief that plastic film is the biggest challenge to face in the recycling of plastics.
Séamus Clancy, Repak CEO, said: “This is something that will require a monumental social change in attitudes to plastic use. Our take, make-use-dispose attitude to plastic cannot continue into the future and will have to be replaced with a more circular, recycle and reuse approach.
But Social Democrats spokesperson on energy and climate change, Cllr Cian O’Callaghan, said the main obstacle is “a ceaseless tide of plastics... foisted on us in supermarkets”.
“Producers and retailers should lead the way and start phasing out now all packaging that can’t be recycled in Ireland — we have the technology and there is a clear demand from consumers to cut out non-recyclable plastics from our lives,” he said.
