Landfill dumping drops 70% in ten years

THE amount of rubbish the country is dumping in landfill sites has dropped by a massive 70% in just ten years.

And the amount of waste each person creates fell by a quarter between 2004 and 2014, official figures released yesterday show.

It means the amount dumped dropped from 1,818,500 to 536,500 tonnes – and the proportion of waste Ireland sends to landfill sites is 20.5%, which is below the EU average of 24.4%.

Helen Cahill, of the Central Statistics Office, said: ‘The proportion sent to landfill varies widely in EU states, from less than 1% in Sweden and Belgium, where recycling and incineration rates are high, to over 80% in Malta and Greece. The quantity of municipal waste generated per person in Ireland decreased by a quarter over the 2004-to-2014 period, from 750kg to 564kg.’

Green Party TD Eamon Ryan said: ‘We are burning it all now; these figures are up to 2014 when only two of the incinerators were working. We were actually exporting a lot at the time.’ He also said that the introduction of charges for green bins, due to China restricting the amount of recycling waste it takes, poses ‘huge risks’ for Ireland’s recycling rates. ‘One is the presence of the incinerators, which are gobbling up everything,’ he said. ‘Secondly, the value of it. I’m told paper for recycling doesn’t have a value and that’s a real difficulty.’

Mr Ryan also pointed out Ireland is the ‘top-ranking’ country for plastic waste in Europe. ‘We have twice the amount of plastic waste than the EU average,’ he said.