How many pieces of plastic and packaging waste go into your recycling bin every day? It’s five items per person, according to a new survey. That’s 73 pieces in your household’s fortnightly bin collection from each individual, according to the data. If you’re a family of four, that’s almost 300 items.
The figures come from a recent national recycling bin survey by environmental charity Voice Ireland. Participating householders audited their recycling bin contents over a two-week period this summer. The aim was to find out what exactly is in our bins and where it’s all coming from.
Some 70 per cent of waste in the average household recycling bin came into the home from the supermarket, according to the survey.
Some of that packaging isn’t even functional, beyond presenting the product in a way that makes it stand out on a shelf and more attractive for you to buy.
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I give you onions in a net. The net is not recyclable, by the way.
The overuse of single-use plastic is often justified by supermarkets with the arguments of hygiene and food waste reduction. However, a study by international environmental NGO Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) demonstrated that for typical fresh produce “plastic packaging had no or little meaningful effect” in keeping the produce fresher for longer.
Yet, households bear the responsibility and the cost of disposing of all of this packaging.
Buy, eat, bin, repeat – each of us is locked in a never-ending flow of waste. We pay for all of this plastic and packaging at the checkout, and we pay for it again through our bin charges.
Our homes have become a cog, another processing centre, in the ever-turning wheel of waste.
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Half of all plastic is designed to be single-use, often discarded after just 12 minutes, says Voice.
Most of us don’t like how all this rubbish makes us feel. Some nine in 10 households in the survey reported feeling “frustrated” by the amount of waste entering their homes.
Recycling can seem like it’s a good thing, but not if the volume of plastic and packaging that needs to be recycled just keeps getting bigger. The materials and energy used to make more and more of this stuff, even if it is recycled properly, has an effect on the planet.
Globally, plastic production emits more than 50 million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually, according to Voice.
And not all plastic and packaging can be recycled, or is recycled. This is the planetary crisis bit: plastics are present everywhere, even in our bodies, with microplastics found in humans, animals, oceans, soil, and even the air we breathe.
In Ireland, we’re recycling more than ever by weight, but our overall recycling rate isn’t improving because our consumption of packaging is growing even faster.
Ireland is the number one producer of plastic packaging waste per capita in the European Union, with 67kg per person in 2023, a 50 per cent increase since 2013, according to Eurostat figures quoted by Voice.
Moreover, Ireland’s current recycling rate for plastic packaging, at 32 per cent, is falling short of our EU targets of 50 per cent by 2025, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) figures quoted by Voice.
That’s why it’s so important to track where the stuff in our recycling bin is coming from. Supermarkets are the biggest culprit.
The Government needs to get much more ambitious in tackling the packaging problem, the charity says. Single-use plastic is not a sustainable consumption model and recycling is limited in its ability to mitigate the waste crisis.
Politicians need to set targets to reduce the quantity of packaging and plastic put on the market, as well as setting legally binding reuse and refill targets for retailers.
Industries must be required to submit plans to phase out single-use plastics. Supermarkets themselves must introduce reuse and refill systems and make progress updates publicly available.
Consumers can make a difference too. When available and affordable, shop where there are refill and reuse options. Invest in reusable containers like water bottles and coffee cups too. And tell your local supermarket, shop, takeaway manager and TD that there is too much plastic and packaging waste coming into your home.
