Recycling Woes Compounded By Failure To Comply With Three Bin System At 29pc Of Companies

Employees are dishing the dirt on their workplace waste habits, revealing that almost one in three businesses do not comply with recycling laws.

It has been a legal requirement since July 2023 for businesses to use the three-bin system so that staff and customers can segregate waste into recyclables, compostables and general rubbish.

However, 29pc of employees surveyed said no such system was in place in their workplace while a further 11pc were not sure, which also is not an encouraging sign.

The survey of 2,000 employees was carried out for Repak, which runs most of the country’s recycling collections, bottle banks and drop-off centres.

The organisation is particularly concerned about how businesses handle plastic packaging generated in the workplace.

Despite increasing funding by €1m in 2024 to help businesses improve their practices, the amount of plastic they recycled fell.

“This concerning trend points to a gap in workplace recycling practices and emphasises the urgent need for businesses to take action,” Repak said.

“Ireland’s [legally binding] 2025 recycling targets require the country to recycle at least 55pc of all plastic packaging waste. Businesses are pivotal in achieving these goals.”

The organisation is running a “Resolve to Recycle Better” campaign this month in the hope that the new year will prompt businesses to make a fresh effort.

Zoe Kavanagh, chief executive of Repak, stressed the urgency of the initiative.

“Every business in Ireland has a duty to meet the three-bin requirement, not just because it is a legal requirement, but because it is critical to Ireland’s environmental goals,” she said.

“By failing to recycle properly, workplaces are not only failing to meet commercial recycling regulations but are also undermining Ireland’s efforts to create a circular economy and achieve future EU recycling targets.”

Since July 2023, all businesses are meant to have three bins for proper waste segregation, but the regulations also place responsibility on waste-collection companies to provide the three-bin system to their commercial customers.

It is not clear from the survey where the fault lies for the failure to implement the regulations.

Along with urging companies to provide the required bins, Repak is asking them to tackle the source of the problem in three steps.

It is asking businesses to reduce unnecessary packaging as a priority and, where packaging is necessary, to switch to reusable or recycling packaging.

It says this packaging should be as lightweight as possible and made from sustainable materials.

The campaign comes just weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warned that Ireland’s waste habits were getting worse.

It said the country was producing 20pc more waste than a decade ago and that recycling rates had remained static.

That is despite much greater public messaging on the issue and ever-tightening legislation around it.

While construction waste is the biggest single source, everyday plastics are a major concern, with only one-third of it recycled despite most of it being recyclable.

The rest is incinerated, much of it having to be shipped abroad to be burnt.

(Source – Irish Independent  – Home / Irish News – Environment – Caroline O Doherty – 02/01/2025)

2024 shaping up to be one of Ireland’s warmest years on record despite unusually cool summer

With just days to go, 2024 is shaping up to be one of Ireland’s top 10 warmest years on record.

It is unlikely to be remembered for high temperatures, however, as more notable events included an unusually cool summer, a code red storm, a flash flood and even a mini-drought.

The top 10 placing, which Met Éireann expects to declare if there are no surprises before the end of the month, comes despite a summer dominated by Arctic air masses that pulled temperatures down.

“We’re in a period now when even when it seems cool, overall temperatures are above the long-term average,” Paul Moore, climatologist with Met Éireann, said.

His point is illustrated by the one month that will enter the record books – May, which was the country’s ­warmest May since recording began. Many would be surprised to hear that, because it was a cloudy and dull month with no real scorchers.

“It was warm because the night-time temperatures were very high,” Mr Moore said.

“We didn‘t have lots of warm, sunny days – it was warm, cloudy days and then warm nights, with the cloud acting as insulation.”

He said that sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, which experienced an unprecedented extreme marine heatwave last year, were still well above average.

“So when we get the air masses coming from there, as we often do, we tend to get above-average temperatures,” he said.

The build-up of heat caused thunderstorms and intense bursts of rain in the second and third weeks of the month – one of several bouts of thunder that occurred during the year.

It was not warm air from the ­Atlantic that shaped the next few months, however, but cold air from the north.

While much of Europe had its warmest summer on record in a year that was the world’s hottest overall, this country was an outlier. The heat from mainland Europe didn’t reach Ireland, which was mostly stuck on the northerly side of the jet stream and was chilled by Arctic blasts. “High pressure tended to build to our west with low pressure over Scandinavia and that brought down cold air,” Mr Moore said.

“If high pressure was to the east then hot air might come up from the south, but we didn’t tap into any of those hot continental air masses during the summer.”

There were some notably warm days this year – particularly those that popped up during winter months.

Belmullet hit a balmy 15.4C on ­January 28 – the highest ever recorded for a January day in that location and a curveball in a month when temperatures were otherwise below average overall.

Moore Park in Cork recorded 14.7C in February and seven of Met Éireann’s 25 main weather stations had their warmest February on record. Five had their warmest in 25 years and nine had their highest-ever minimum night-time temperature, which never fell below –2.2C.

A narrower-than-normal gap between day and night temperatures was also a feature in March and April.

More recently, temperatures reached 19.1C in Athenry on October 16 and a remarkable 19.2C in Dublin’s Phoenix Park on November 6.

This year has also been notable for storms, beginning with Storm Isha, which struck on January 21 and was followed just three days later by Storm Jocelyn. Western and north-western counties were worst hit during this period and fallen power lines left tens of thousands without electricity, some for several days.

Storm Kathleen struck in early April and Lilian arrived in August followed by Ashley in October, Bert in November and the biggest of them all, Darragh.

Storm Darragh, which blasted through most of the country during the first week of this month had multiple counties under red wind warnings and deservedly so.

Many trees came down across the country and at one point almost 400,000 customers were without power.

Thousands still had no electricity days later and the impact on neighbouring Britain is continuing to be felt here in the disruption caused by damage to Holyhead port.

Two other storms, Henk in January and Conall in November, were also on Ireland’s radar, but they skirted around the country, causing little more than a stiff breeze.

Storm damage might have been worse only for the fact that in most cases the accompanying rain was less extreme than experienced in previous years. That wasn’t the case in Donegal, however, where heavy rain during Storm Bert caused flooding in several parts, most dramatically in Killybegs.

The River Feale rose so rapidly that it burst its banks and inundated homes and businesses before anyone had a chance to sound a warning or move to protect their property and belongings.

Yet even in Donegal, overall rainfall was below average, as it was in all but four of Met Éireann’s main stations over the year.

Valentia, Co Kerry; Roches Point, Co Cork; Cork Airport and Johnstown Castle in Co Wexford recorded rainfall slightly above average, but all others had just 70-80pc of their normal annual totals.

Many stations had official “dry spells”, which means 15 or more consecutive days with less than a millimetre of rain each.

One area, Moore Park in Co Cork, was officially declared to be in drought in January with 16 days when every day had no rain or less than 0.2mm of rain.

February, March and April were wetter than average and parts of Donegal and Wexford received almost twice their normal monthly rainfall.

June and July were cool and dry in most places, but August saw the country split, with the west and north getting a good deal of rain while the east and south received little.

The pattern flipped in September with the north and west the driest, and the south and east wettest.

It was mostly cool all over and there was an usually early autumn frost, but since then, temperatures have been mainly mild.

Last year was Ireland’s hottest and wettest on record, with a mean temperature of 11.2C. Mr Moore said that would not be repeated this year, but he said temperatures were still generally moving in the same direction – upwards – as the evidence of climate change becomes ever more pronounced.

The outlook for 2025 is uncertain, although it is expected that overall global temperatures may be marginally lower than this year, which was under the influence of El Niño for the first half.

El Niño is a natural climatic variation caused by the movement of warm air from the Pacific and it helped supercharge the already climbing temperatures of the last two years.

Its opposite, La Niña, generally has a cooling effect, but scientists have said that if a La Niña develops in 2025, they are not confident it will substantially counteract the human-caused warming of the world.

“Even if a La Niña event does emerge, its short-term cooling impact will be insufficient to counterbalance the warming effect of record heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Celeste Saulo, of the World Meteorological Organisation, said. “Even in the absence of El Niño or La Niña, conditions since May, we have witnessed an extraordinary series of extreme weather events which have unfortunately become the new norm in our changing climate.”

(Source – Irish Independent – Home / Environment – Caroline O Doherty – 26/12/2024)