Developing Ireland’s First National Waste Plan for a Circular Economy

Challenge

People living in Ireland produce more than 14 million tonnes of waste every year. We do this in our homes, our places of work and leisure. International and national waste policy is drawn up so that we produce less waste, and that the waste we do create is recycled as much as possible. What cannot be recycled should at least serve another useful purpose (such as energy production).

A large proportion of Ireland’s waste legislation springs from our membership of the European Union. The new EU Circular Economy package of measures is designed to ensure that once raw materials have entered our economy, they are kept in circulation for as long as possible, rather than being disposed of after one use.

Ireland’s Circular Material Use Rate is one of the lowest in the EU largely as a direct result of our use of natural resources (aggregates, mining, fossil fuels and agriculture) versus our relatively low rate of recycling.

Solution

The ambition of the National Waste Management Plan for a Circular Economy is twofold:

• To reduce the generation of waste in the State
• To grow the circular economy sector, promoting the prevention of waste through reuse and repair initiatives, and where waste is generated, to increase recycling

We have prepared detailed modelling of future waste volumes to predict the growth of waste generation and to allow for the identification of targeted interventions to curb this growth. These interventions are then translated into policy actions to achieve the plan’s ambition of Zero Waste Growth.

In addition, a series of policy actions were also devised to help increase the national Circular Material Use Rate through improved circular systems including reuse, repair and recycling.

These policy actions will be tracked through compliance with a series of plan specific targets and indications on consumption, contamination, repair and reuse.