Lack of recycling may lead to more landfill sites

One of the State's leading waste experts has warned of a need for more landfill sites than expected due to a lack of progress in recycling programmes.

Mr P.J. Rudden, co-author of five of the six regional waste management plans adopted by local authorities, said recycling targets of 40 to 50 per cent were " terribly ambitious".

To achieve such targets, recycling in cities needed to be 70 per cent waste because the take up would not be as high in rural areas, Mr Rudden said.

He added that Galway is the recycling capital of Ireland with recycling at about 40 per cent.

However, a forthcoming Environmental Protection Agency report will state that national recycling is only at 15 per cent, he said, compared with recycling at 8 per cent in 1996 and 9 per cent three years later.

Mr Rudden added, however, that the number of bring-banks has doubled in two years.

Each local authority has benefited hugely from the appointment of environmental awareness officers, he added.

Mr Rudden said that with the slow progress in recycling and thermal treatment, more landfills than planned for in the regional waste management plans would be developed.

In relation to incineration, Mr Rudden said the north-east was the only region where plans for thermal treatment had been lodged.

The plan by Indaver Ireland Ltd is facing widespread public opposition to locate an incinerator in Co Meath.

Mr Rudden said it was expected that a developer through a public-private partnership would be appointed towards the end of the year to develop an incinerator in the Poolbeg area of Dublin.

The plans will be lodged in 2004.

He said the facility will treat 25 per cent of Dublin's waste or 500,000 tonnes per annum.

Mr Rudden said: "Thermal treatment is the last piece of the jigsaw and in no instance will any local authority thermal-treatment facility be in place at the end of the plan period in 2005 and that was anticipated in the various plans."