![]() ![]() ![]() “I think that involved an incinerator.” (Okay maybe some spoilers) “The whole purpose of what we’re trying to do here is avoid incineration. The set-up we are looking at is reminiscent of the scene in Toy Story 3 when the heroes get to spend a day in some class of waste facility (no spoilers here), ![]() The recovery rate of packaging waste in Ireland increased from 25 per cent in 2001 to more than 90 per cent now. We are getting better at managing it, however, and according to Central Statistics Office(CSO) data, 74 per cent of our waste ended up in landfill in 2001 compared to 16 per cent in 2021. The set-up we are looking at is reminiscent of the scene in Toy Story 3 when the heroes get to spend a day in some class of waste facility We are sure we have misheard as it seems like an outlandishly large number but he repeats the figure and while it is undoubtedly big, it is dwarfed by the 3.2 million tonnes of municipal waste Ireland generates every year. The Irish Times asks how long it takes to accumulate that amount of rubbish. “It’s really important to get the maximum amount of material or resource value out of this,” he says.īeside the environmental scientist is the aptly named Saran Greene, a mechanical engineer and the general manager of the facility.Īfter a brief induction and the donning of protective gear he takes us on a tour.įirst up is the entry hall: a giant warehouse where 300 tonnes of recyclable material has been piled high. “We also have a lot of people,” he continues. He talks about optical separators, robotics, machine learning and the buzzword of our time, artificial intelligence. It is licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency to accept 100,000 tonnes a year which, he says, makes it the largest such facility in the State.įrom the outside, it does not look promising but Tobin insists that we are standing outside a “sophisticated plant”. The depot caters for the larger Dublin area and the recyclable rubbish from more than 440,000 homes comes through the gates weekly. “When we take the contents of recycling bins into our trucks, we bring them here and we sort them into single-stream materials which are then sent on for onward recycling.”įrom the outside it does not look promising but Tobin insists that we are standing outside a ‘sophisticated plant’ If those who generated the waste did what they were supposed to, the job these men do would not be quite so grim, but by not simply rinsing out those milk, coleslaw and yoghurt containers or by sneaking the odd dirty nappy into the recycling bin, city dwellers ensure the men have to deal with an unholy and sometimes stinking mess before the recycling process can even start.ĭavid Tobin is an environmental scientist and the head of sustainability for the Beauparc Group, of which Panda is a part, and he’s almost evangelical about his role.įirst, he explains what happens at the Ballymount Material Recovery Facility. When they are done, the recyclable waste makes its way along more than 1km of conveyor belts to be sorted into various piles including aluminium, cardboard and Tetra Pak before being shipped to plants across the developed world to be turned into something new. The dozen wearing high-viz jackets and face masks stand somewhat morosely by a thunderously loud conveyor belt sifting through the detritus of the city, sorting it into funnels and watching out for rogue materials. The job being done by the men stationed close to the entrance of the Panda waste facility in Ballymount is by any conceivable measure grim and it is made all the more so by the carelessness of too many Dubliners. ![]()
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