Irish consumers have been urged to make a special effort to be kind to the environment and to visit their local "bring banks" to mark National Recycling Week.
The fifth annual such event, promoted by the recycling initiative Repak, starts today and runs until next Monday.
The theme for the event is Keep Recycling - let's get it sorted. It aims to get people to recycle the maximum amount of packaging to help Ireland achieve its 2005 EU packaging recovery target of 50 per cent. The target is to recover some 535,000 tonnes of waste packaging in Ireland this year. To date, around 308,000 tonnes have been recovered.
Repak chief executive Andrew Hetherington said: "Getting more people to recycle is essential to Ireland meeting tough new European recycling targets. In addition we also need families to look deeper into what they throw out to see if it can be recycled.
"More materials are being added to the list of what can be recycled and this week is a great opportunity to check out what you can bring to your local recycling centre."
Repak is a voluntary initiative between industry and the Department of the Environment that aims to help industry to meet its obligations on packaging recycling under EU law.
The Green Party said waste recycling figures were improving but "we are still far from reaching the European recycling targets set for Ireland.
"Recently yet another European report put Ireland close to the bottom of the league for recycling. Ireland came second last in overall recycling with a figure of 35 per cent while Germany managed to recycle an impressive 74 per cent of its waste,' said Green Party environment spokesman Ciarán Cuffe.
"While Ireland has achieved the 2005 target of 25 per cent, our recycling rates compare poorly in all categories to other EU member states. Ireland was ranked last on recycling paper, second last on recycling metals, eleventh out of fifteen for glass recycling and ninth out of fifteen for recycling plastics."
Mr Cuffe said the Government continued to push incineration as the solution to waste disposal but had not established sufficient recycling facilities and markets to meet Ireland's growing recycling demands.
"It is ridiculous that almost three-quarters of Irish material for recycling is sent abroad - much of it to China. Transportation of material for recycling in the Far East cannot be passed off as evidence of progress in Ireland," Mr Cuffe said.