Food waste mountain 50% above EU target

IRELAND’S growing mountains of organic and food waste threaten to breach a key EU target, an environmental report has warned.

While Ireland is increasingly recycling household and urban waste, large amounts of organic waste — including food products — are still being dumped into landfills.

The amount of biodegradable waste being dumped by households and businesses grew to 1.48 million tonnes in 2007, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report.

Biodegradable waste can include food, garden, paper and cardboard waste.

The amount dumped in 2007 was nearly 50% more than the EU directive of less than one million tonnes of biodegradable waste which Ireland has committed to achieving by 2010.

“Urgent and short-term actions” were needed to tackle the growing food waste, said EPA director Laura Burke.

Environment Minister John Gormley yesterday conceded he was concerned about the growing mountains of biodegradable waste. He said he had asked local authorities to roll out brown bins across the regions.

However, the report found just eight of 34 local authorities were using the organic recycling bin in 2007.

Ireland now faced severe fines, warned Fine Gael yesterday following the release of the National Waste Report.

“Instead of improving our recycling performance in the crucial area of biodegradable waste, Ireland is going backwards and we all may have to pay the financial penalty,” warned the party’s environment spokesman Phil Hogan.

Green Party leader Mr Gormley said he would now bring forward regulations to help divert commercial biodegradable waste from landfills. These are expected in include increased costs for companies that dump organic waste, including food.

“[This] will make sustainable alternatives such as composting more economically attractive,” added the minister.

Around a quarter of biodegradable municipal waste is made up of food.

According to the environment agency, as much as 75% of a household bins can also include food waste.

The agency’s Gerry Byrne said yesterday that it was “going to be difficult” to meet the 2010 directive to keep this waste below a million tonnes.

But the programme manager for the agency added: “When facilities are in place, people will use them.”

The report also found that the amount of biodegradable waste recycled also fell by a small percentage to just over 36% in 2007.

With 11 months to clean up Ireland’s act before breaching the EU directive, the Environmental Protection Agency also stressed it was important that the capacity and facilities to treat biodegradable waste were improved.

Meanwhile, there was some good news for the Government in the agency’s report.

It showed that Ireland recycled 36% of municipal waste or mainly urban waste in 2007, exceeding a 2013 target of 35%.

Some 64% of packaging waste was also recycled, which was above the EU target of 60% by 2011.

Furthermore, the collection of 8.7kgs of household waste of electrical and electronic equipment per person was more than double the EU target of 4kg per head.