Companies and environmental groups are calling on Stormont to usher in a more consistent approach to recycling across Northern Ireland's council areas.
They say we currently export around 90,000 tonnes of recyclables collected from NI households each year, while companies with ability to repurpose it are forced to ship in materials for their recycling plants from other countries.
Now Encirc, Enva, Bryson Recycling and Friends of the Earth have launched a Keep Recycling Local campaign urging authorities to make changes that could save millions and damage the planet less.
Read more: One wrong item in your recycling bin can make lorry loads useless
They say a three-stream approach, with glass; card and paper; plastics, tines and other packaging collected separately at homes, would vastly improve our recycling rates and incentivise more local processing rather than the export of materials.
Enva Director, Barry Phillips, said: "This will save ratepayers and local businesses millions every year."
The company, which operates 30 facilities across the UK and Ireland, including five in NI, manages hazardous and non hazardous waste to create products for re-use in manufacturing and energy conversion.
"As the people tasked with recycling these materials, we see on a daily basis that mixing materials during collections, such glass, paper, cardboard, and plastics, simply doesn’t work," he added. "It seriously lowers the quality of the materials, and this wouldn’t be the case if we adopted a 3-stream approach of collecting glass; paper and cardboard and other materials such as plastics, cans, and cartons separately."
Encirc produces more than 4 billion glass containers each year for leading global brands, filling many of them for retail across the UK and Europe from discarded glass.
The firm's head of sustainability, Fiacre O’Donnell, said: "We pride ourselves on putting sustainability at the heart of what we do at Encirc. We employ over 400 people in County Fermanagh, all working hard each day to innovate on our journey towards Net Zero.
"However, we’re put at a disadvantage by having to import recyclable materials from other countries which is damaging for the planet.
"We have to import because glass collected from households locally is contaminated during collections by being mixed with other materials in 'co-mingled' bins, which means councils in turn are having to spend millions shipping these materials as far as India and Thailand.
"These are materials we could use in our processes, thus lowering the carbon impact of our product, as well as seeing a major reduction in carbon emissions from keeping recycling local. We know there is a better way."
Supporting the campaign, Eric Randall, director of NI’s largest recycling collector Bryson Recycling, said: “Adopting the 3-stream approach would ensure that 80% of materials collected in Northern Ireland could be recycled locally, compared to the current figure of around 10%.
"All the glass collected mixed in wheelie bins is exported due to quality issues, and it appears over 40% is wasted in the sorting process. That could be reduced to 1% if we collected it separately, with everything staying in Northern Ireland for recycling.
"Only 15% of plastics collected mixed with glass and other materials is recycled here. Adopting a 3-stream approach would increase the amount to around 90%. This will save cash-strapped councils millions each year, provide better value for money for rate payers, save local businesses millions and enable them to be more competitive.
"Of course, it will also significantly reduce Northern Ireland’s carbon footprint and protect the environment as we won’t be exporting poorly sorted materials to countries that don’t have the infrastructure to deal with the waste they receive. We are ambitious about recycling and want to support Northern Ireland to achieve the highest recycling rates in the UK.”
Bryson Recycling is owned by the Bryson Charitable Group and is the largest social enterprise recycler in the UK. It collects and processes materials collected from over 50% of homes in Northern Ireland, employs over 320 staff, operates 11 recycling centres in Northern Ireland, Donegal, and Wales, and provides collection services for garden and residual waste.
To find out more information about the campaign or see how you could get involved, please visit www.keeprecyclinglocal.com
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