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What you put in each trash can is important. Photo: iStock

"Why is it important that I put what I put in the trash bin? Are you sure they won’t all go to the landfill?" Rogue operators are still illegally dumping domestic garbage on the side of the road, but the journey of the contents of our household trash cans has become more diverse and arguably more transparent and unlicensed landfills.

As residents, the changes in the various items that we put in mixed bins, recyclable waste and compostable waste—in many ways—are good news. However, in 2017, China refused to accept large amounts of polluted mixed waste from European countries, the United States and Australia, forcing waste management companies to change their methods. As part of the EU’s Landfill Directive, the reduction of Irish landfills from approximately 125 in 2000 to three in 2021 is another part of the story.

"I can't say with 100% certainty where everything went, but when the Chinese sword fell in 2017, it sounded a wake-up call to the world," explained Séamus Clancy, CEO of the non-profit organization Repak. The industry body was established in 1997 to ensure that large retailers and manufacturers fulfill their EU obligations and recycle their packaging that they put on the market.

"What happened to our trash was invisible before, but then we realized that we had to stand on the plate and do [find the destination for our trash] at our own door," Clancy said.

The images of mountains of garbage polluting the air and water in Asian countries shocked consumers in the Western world. They never worried about where they would go after throwing out the garbage. Once people realized that they did not "leave", environmental NGOs began to inquire about the destination of Irish exports of waste materials. This growing awareness is forcing closer monitoring of the transportation of waste overseas. It also coincides with the EU setting higher recycling targets for plastics, glass, food and beverage cans, food waste and other materials.

"We prefer to have a full traceability of the final destination, rather than land [something] in a landfill in a remote country without accountability," Clancy said. Retailers and manufacturers pay Repak (70% of packaging waste) to subsidize household recycling bins, bottle storage, and local authority recycling centers. In turn, Repak is responsible for monitoring the items entering the warehouses of private waste management operators, as well as the outflow and whereabouts of vital items.

The introduction of a circular economy-focusing on the reuse of these secondary materials-is the last piece of the puzzle, making it worthwhile for waste management companies to encourage everyone to work hard to separate garbage, while reducing garbage can charges (your mixed garbage can has the highest upgrade cost , So it makes sense to separate as much food and recyclable garbage as possible into other bins). Some garbage collectors provide customers with the weight of each bin, but have not yet penalized customers for incorrectly sorting garbage (although some have installed cameras on their recycling trucks to monitor the condition of the garbage).

According to Des Crinion, Panda Recycling Supervisor and Irish Waste Supervisor, the best way to ensure that your household waste does not end up in unlicensed landfills or roadsides is to sign a contract with a licensed waste collector to manage the association in Ireland for disposal 80% of waste. You can check with the National Waste Collection Permit Office to see if your local waste collection company has a waste collection permit. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued permits to waste treatment plants and has sued 19 companies for non-compliance since 2016.

Crinion said that there is no area in Ireland where there is no household wheeled bin service. "Any household that needs a wheeled trash can service can be used by them. Every waste collector should hold a waste collection permit. Most illegal activities occur in household cleaning or site cleaning, not household waste," Crinion Say.

Now, let's take a short tour of your household trash can to see where the waste management company is going to collect the contents if it complies with its permit.

Start with the brown bin-if you dispose of the waste correctly, it should only contain cooked and raw food, light garden waste, and compostable packaging. “The contents of the brown bins are used for anaerobic digestion or industrial composting, and the waste management company pays for it,” Crinion explains. There are seven private industrial composting facilities in Ireland, licensed by local authorities or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture. The compost made at these locations is mainly sold as a peat substitute for landscaping, agriculture, and gardening.

The Irish Composting and Anaerobic Digestion Association (Cré) began certification of compostable packaging in June 2021. Cré CEO Percy Foster said that the organization would like to see subsidies for brown bins similar to subsidies for recycling bins. “In Italy, the fees paid by producers who put compostable plastics on the market are now only used to subsidize the collection and recycling of food waste and compostable plastics. We hope to see similar programs independent of Repak introduced here,” Foster said.

Approximately 800,000 households in Ireland have compostable bins (usually brown bins), and a total of 1.3 million households use roadside garbage collection services.

Approximately 10% of the contents of brown trash bins are sent to anaerobic digesters in Ireland and the United Kingdom, where methane gas is extracted and converted into electricity that is fed to the grid. Farmers use residues called digests as an organic substitute for nitrogen fertilizer to spread on their land, thereby reducing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from this source into the atmosphere.

The items in the recycling bins are processed in a recycling factory, also known as a material recycling facility. Here, the contents are unloaded from the truck via a conveyor belt system that uses different tools to separate the metal from the plastic and paper. According to Crinion, materials that do not fall into these categories are made into so-called solid recycled fuels, which are used in cement kilns instead of coal.

"Recycled bins have created value, and today's commodity prices are at a record high. For example, recycled plastic is now more valuable than virgin plastic, which is a positive impact of legislation requiring manufacturers to use recycled plastic in their packaging," Crinion said.

The soft plastic was reintroduced into the recycling bin in September 2021. Due to high pollution and insufficient recycling capacity, the soft plastic was removed in 2017. “Since 2017, the waste industry has improved its facilities for receiving soft plastics. Although there are still some problems, pollution [such as food left on plastics] has been greatly reduced,” Clancy explained.

Crinion explained that most of the paper in the recycling bins is sold in Europe, but a small portion is also sold in India. "Before 2017, 60% of paper went to Asia. Now, this proportion has dropped to about 10%. Aluminum is the most valuable material in recycling bins, and it is sold to smelters in the United States and Europe. Steel tanks are sold in Spain and Turkey. , PET bottles are currently sold to the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Germany."

According to Crinion, all plastics are now being processed in Europe, and some are also processed in Ireland. For example, entrepreneur Billy Costello, who owns the Green Generation anaerobic digester facility in Co Kildare, is planning to build a factory to reprocess plastic into road barriers, railway sleepers, and telephone poles. Panda is building a factory to process recycled PET bottles into pellets for use in making more bottles in Portlaoise, Laos. "This will be the first bottle factory in Ireland to manufacture bottles at home. We will be able to process 100% of the plastic bottles on the Irish market," Crinion said. (Crinion also believes that the government’s plan to install reverse vending machines in stores and other places is an expensive and outdated method. Instead, he recommends that consumers can Take a digital scan and get paid for each plastic bottle. Just come back.)

Finally, let’s take a look at the inside of the mixed bin (usually a black bin)-according to the EPA, it historically contains most of the waste we end up in landfill and still accounts for the collection from households Almost half of all garbage. "When the black trash can enters our warehouse, we will chop it up to open the bag and loosen the material. Of course about 25% of the food waste in the black trash can shouldn't be there. This kind of [low grade] food waste It is sent to an anaerobic digester to cover the waste that is still entering the landfill,” Crinion explained.

The metal in the mixed bins is extracted with magnets and sold to metal refineries in Spain and Turkey. Food cans and aluminum cans were also removed and sold to smelters. Small pieces of plastic (which of course should be in the recycling bin) are removed and sent to the cement kiln as an alternative fuel for coal (called solid recycled fuel). Waste management companies pay cement plants to accept this waste, even if it replaces imported fossil fuels. The wreckage in the mixed waste bins—about 50% of their original quantity—is sent to one of two incinerators in Ireland for incineration, or to incineration plants in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, or Lithuania.

According to Clancy, Repak has strict compliance requirements for material recycling facilities. This includes a study of the waste characteristics of each licensed operator and the documents that the monitoring company receives when exporting materials to foreign countries. Cross-border transportation regulations require every waste management company that transports waste abroad to determine the exact route and final destination of the material.

"These things allow us to minimize the risk that the material will end up in the wrong location," Clancy said.

And, of course, to a large extent also depends on where we, as residents, put the trash. "Don't let me start throwing rubbish," Crinion said. "Can everyone take it home and put it in the correct bin?"

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