Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

410 Chapter 15: Circular Economy and Waste 3. Current situation 10 The CSO, in compliance with Regulation (EU) No. 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts, compiles this data for Eurostat. It is presented in Figure 15.6. 11 Click here to see the full EUROSTAT data timeseries and for more information on the material sources, flows and stages: ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/sankey/circular_economy/sankey.html?geos=EU27&year=2022&unit=MIO_T&materials= TOTAL&highlight=&nodeDisagg=0101100100&flowDisagg=false&language=EN&material=TOTALflow diagrams (europa.eu) (accessed 29 June 2024). Material consumption Analysis of how materials flow 10 through the economy can help to identify waste and environmental emissions that would otherwise go unnoticed in conventional economic monitoring systems. It can also allow the exploration of solutions. As shown in Figure 15.6, Ireland’s open economy consumed over 140 million tonnes of goods and primary raw materials in 2022: 31% from abroad and 69% extracted in Ireland. Of the inputs to the Irish economy in 2022 (141 million tonnes), only 28% (39 million tonnes) of materials was accumulated, 14% (19 million tonnes) was exported and 1% (1 million tonnes) was recycled. Figure 15.6  The flow of material inputs to and outputs from the Irish economy, 2022 (million tonnes) Exports 19 Dissipative flows 14 Total emissions 63 Emissions to air 63 Emissions to water 1 Waste landfilled 2 Incineration 1 Material use 46 Backfilling 8 Recycling 1 Waste treatment 13 Material accumulation 33 Processed material 141 Direct material inputs 131 Imports 43 Natural resources extracted 88 Source: Eurostat 11 The circular material use rate, or circularity rate, is a measure of material reused, recycled and recovered and fed back into the economy. In 2022, Ireland’s material circularity rate was 1.8%, while the average circularity rate in the EU was 11.5%. We are currently out of step with other Member States. A recent EPA research report recommends interventions such as improving the domestic recycling of construction and mineral wastes while reducing the primary consumption of these materials (McCarthy et al ., 2024) to improve our circularity rate. The data suggest that there is significant scope to improve Ireland’s material circularity rate, which is low by European standards, by reducing the extraction of natural resources and encouraging greater material efficiency and use of secondary materials. A higher circularity rate would mean that more secondary materials would be in use and would replace primary raw materials, thus reducing the environmental impacts of extracting raw materials.