Ireland goes for green with new recycling effort
Date: 26-Oct-01
Country: REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
Author: Amanda Cooper
The government is mulling the possibility of introducing a series of levies to fund implementation of new European Union regulations due to come into force by mid-2002 on recycling and recovery of vehicles and electrical and electronic goods.
"Because of Ireland's poor recycling and recovery performance in the past, the government published a strategy in 1998...that adopted an integrated approach to recycling services and infrastructure, with very ambitious targets," Terry Sheridan of the environment department said at the Dublin seminar.
The government had set itself 15-year targets under which 50 percent of household waste would be diverted from landfill, and materials recycled would account for 35 percent of municipal waste, up from around 9 percent in 1998.
Under the Waste Infrastructure Grants Scheme for the period to 2006, some 70 million punts would be spent on initiatives for the recycling of waste, and on implementation of the EU's End-of-life Vehicle (ELV) and Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives.
"Voluntary industry-led producer responsibility initiative is the preferred implementation approach in Ireland," Sheridan said at the Bureau of International Recycling seminar.
"We only have six months to transpose this legislation. The minister (of the environment) would like to reach an agreement with the industry on the initiative as soon as possible, before the transposition date of April 22 2002."
Ireland was considering the introduction of a levy on first-registration and newly imported vehicles to cover the costs of recycling and recovering ELVs, although no final decision had been made because of opposition from car owners.
"Motorists are against the levy on first-time registered vehicles because it will affect the price of the vehicle but we hope to reach a conclusion on these discussions," Sheridan said.
A serious environmental threat was posed by the ever-growing graveyard of obsolete electronic equipment heaped into landfills each year, and the Irish government was looking to industry for proposals on how to fund the implementation of WEEE.
"Maybe there will be a seperate levy on the line-entry fee attached to the purchase of electronic and electrical goods to fund their recycling and recovery under WEEE. But I wouldn't want to pre-empt any proposals from the industry about how the scheme should operate," Sheridan said.
The government also planned to introduce a small charge on plastic shopping bags used at supermarkets in a bid to cut consumption of bags and the amount of plastic being sent to landfills.
The proceeds from the various levy schemes would be used to create a fund to help finance waste management and other environmental initiatives and projects, Sheridan said.