Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

427 Chapter 15: Circular Economy and Waste Topic Box 15.6  Chemical by-product case study The company Vision Care uses propylene glycol (PG) as a hydration agent in the manufacture of contact lenses. The used material is in demand by the aviation sector for use in products such as de-icing fluid and heat transfer fluid. Planned expansion at the Vision Care manufacturing facility in Limerick is expected to increase volumes of used PG to 24,500 m 3 per year by 2025. The EPA made a decision to grant this material by-product status, which means that it no longer needs to be treated as a hazardous waste; it had previously been exported for recovery. The financial and environmental gains for the company are considerable. The decision will also have the knock-on effect of lowering Ireland’s national hazardous waste figures (initially by an estimated 15,000 tonnes; this figure could grow depending on production of PG at the facility). Enforcement The NWESC has an oversight role in coordinating waste enforcement activities in Ireland. It seeks to drive compliance, public and environmental protection and consistency by setting national waste enforcement priorities for all waste regulators. The committee is co-chaired by DECC and the EPA and includes representatives from a wide range of regulatory authorities. Other stakeholders in the waste sector have input to the committee through an Industry Contact Group (DECC, 2021c). Following discussion and engagement, and the inclusion of recommendations from the EPA, DECC set out the high-level national enforcement priorities for the period 2022–2024 in a circular to all regulators in 2021 (DECC, 2021b). Each priority area has associated annual and multi- annual deliverables. An increased number of multi- agency investigations have been initiated since 2022 to give effect to the five national waste priorities set by the NWESC. Emphasis is placed on multi-agency investigations, recognising that waste moves across all types of authorisations regardless of whether they are issued and enforced by local authorities or the EPA. The EPA ensures that major industrial and waste operations in Ireland comply with their licences, be they industrial emissions, integrated pollution control or waste licences. The EPA launched the Beyond Compliance initiative, which aims to recognise operators who do more than their EPA licence requires and to encourage them to further reduce their environmental emissions and improve their performance (see case study in Topic Box 15.7). The beyond compliance concept is also discussed in Chapter 13.