Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

460 Chapter 16: Environmental Policy Implementation and Performance POLICY AREA CURRENT ASSESSMENT OUTLOOK NOTES CIRCULAR ECONOMY AND WASTE Circular economy and waste Generation of municipal waste Municipal waste generation in Ireland continues to increase, growing by 14.8% between 2016 and 2021. Per capita municipal waste generation also increased over the same period by 9%, from 581 kg/person in 2016 to 633 kg/person in 2021. Reducing waste generation will require significant new waste prevention and consumption reduction measures. Recycling of municipal waste Ireland’s recycling rate for municipal waste has plateaued at 41% (EPA, 2023c), presenting a considerable challenge to meeting the EU recycling targets of 55% by 2025 and 65% by 2035. Efforts to increase recycling are being outpaced by growing waste generation, highlighting that recent interventions to improve recycling need to be coupled with measures to reduce waste generation. Recycling of plastic packaging waste Ireland’s recycling rate for plastic packaging waste was 28% in 2021, a considerable distance from the EU recycling target of 50% by 2025 (EPA, 2023c). Whether interventions such as the Deposit Return Scheme will be sufficient to meet the 2025 target remains to be seen. Landfilling of municipal waste Ireland’s landfill rate for municipal waste was 16% in 2021, unchanged from the previous 2 years (EPA, 2023c). Ireland must reduce the share of municipal waste landfilled to 10% or less by 2035. Biodegradable municipal waste diversion from landfill After many years of a downwards trend, the amount of biodegradable municipal waste disposed to landfill in Ireland increased slightly in 2021 and 2022, mirroring a rise in the total amount of municipal waste landfilled. However, Ireland remains compliant (by a large margin) with the stricter limits introduced in 2020 (EPA, 2023g). Collection and recovery of electrical and electronic waste Ireland met the EU recovery, recycling and reuse targets for all categories of waste electronic and electrical equipment in 2022, and met most by a considerable margin (EPA, 2024f). However, Ireland has not succeeded in meeting the waste electronic and electrical equipment collection target of 65%, achieving a collection rate of 64% in 2021 (EPA, 2023c).