EPA calls for more investment in waste management

In this, the eighth edition, the agency has said that Ireland is continuing “to play catch up” in its sustainability progress and calls out environmental progress as “aspiring to only minimum standards”.  

The EPA recommended scaling up investment in waste management infrastructure, alongside water, energy and transport. 

It added: “Our reliance on landfills has reduced dramatically, but we are generating and exporting too much waste.” 

Speaking at the launch of the report, Laura Burke, director general of the EPA, said: “We can no longer take the environment for granted. By taking determined actions, we will ensure we are not going to go back or playing catch-up. This time, we need to be ahead. A healthier environment is attainable for all and is within our reach.” 

Waste management in the 2024 Environment Report 

Part Two: Chapter 15 of the report focused on the waste management sector – with a heavy emphasis on methods to support the circular economy.  

For achieving circularity in the plastic industry, the report emphasised a need to support consumers in understanding how to correctly segregate certain plastic wastes.   

Similarly, for textiles, only 31% of people were found to see a clear link between the consumption of textiles and climate. There was a focus on needing to encourage consumers to purchase fewer clothes.  

With food waste, the report identified that lack of planning is a key generator of food waste in the home. Communication campaigns were found to be suitable to address this.  

The section concluded that Ireland’s economy is characterised by high consumption, one of the highest in Europe, and high volumes of waste generated per capita. Ireland is currently on course to miss EU waste recycling targets for municipal, total packaging and plastic packaging wastes for 2025. The report said that one factor is that the recycling rate cannot keep up with the amount of packaging waste consumed.  

Ireland’s capacity to collect and treat waste is vulnerable and underperforming, with an over-reliance on other countries to treat its recycling materials, general municipal and hazardous wastes. 

The report called for systemic change to accelerate the transition to “an accessible, fair and affordable circular economy”. In particular, it called for effective regulation, incentives and enforcement to influence businesses and consumers to adopt best practices in production, supply, purchasing, use and reuse of goods, products and services. 

Burke concluded: “We have made immense progress as a nation. Our membership of the EU helped us achieve that. We now look back to a time when we had serious industrial pollution of our rivers, when we relied on over a hundred municipal dumps, when we burned smoky fuel in our cities – and we can never go back to that. 

“But where we are right now, while it is better, is nowhere near good enough. We are always playing catch-up. We now have virtually no seriously polluted rivers, but we have hardly any pristine ones left, either. We now recycle more, but produce more waste than ever and export much of it. We are taking positive actions across multiple fronts, but they are not keeping pace with the growing pressures, and our environment is being squeezed. Increments now are not best use of scarce time and resources: We need to make a fundamental shift.”