International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

of the order 65% would reduce the quantity of BMW in waste at the outset, and
reduce the net quantity being landfilled, by around 70,000 tonnes. However, the
1995 baseline would also be lower, so that the net improvement in the position re
landfilling of BMW would be of the order 50,000 tonnes. Given how close Ireland
could be to meeting these targets, such a change – which merely improves the
accuracy of the accounting – could be rather important in the final analysis.
Possible means to achieve the target would need to include one or more of the
following:
831
1. Rapid Rapid development development of of home home composting composting for for municipal municipal biowastes;
biowastes;
Whilst this might be a useful and cost-effective measure for households, the
increase in uptake of home composting might not be extraordinarily high,
whilst for many households, home composting is not an option. A 5% increase
in home composting would be a very significant result in the time available,
but this would give an estimated benefit of only 13,230 tonnes. Nor is it clear
how this would be accounted for – it is not clear that the reduction in waste
would necessarily be registered as being of a wholly biodegradable nature.
Finally, such campaigns do require planning and trained staff. They are
unlikely to be successful in such a short space of time, so it seems likely that
the best option would be to build upon existing schemes; 1042
2. A A campaign campaign to to reduce reduce the the wastage wastage of of food food (and (and other other waste waste prevention
prevention
campaigns);
campaigns);
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) ‘Love Food, Hate Waste’
campaign has specifically targeted food waste, recognising the cost of wasted
food to households and to the environment (embodied greenhouse gas
benefits are estimated to be of the order 2.5 tonnes CO2 equ per tonne of food
waste avoided). Even if 5% of all food waste could be prevented in the time
available, the net benefit might be only of the order 30,000 tonnes. As with
home composting, because it is not clear how this would be accounted for, it is
not clear that the reduction in waste would necessarily be registered as being
of a wholly biodegradable nature;
3. Rapi Rapid Rapi Rapid
d development development of of facilities facilities to to deal deal with with BMW BMW in in residual residual waste.
waste.
So as not compromise efforts of those already advanced in developing plans
for residual waste treatment, it might make sense to seek rapid procurement
of MBT capacity for Ireland capable of carrying out basic pre-treatment of
waste to stabilise the material prior to landfilling. To the extent that this was
deemed to meet threshold criteria, the aim of this would be to deliver the
additional diversion necessary to meet the 2010 targets. However, it might be
argued that several of the urban areas already have proposals in hand for
incineration, and that the procured facilities might more usefully be targeted at
rural areas. To the extent that this approach was favoured, development of the
1042 CSO figures suggest Ireland has 1.47 million private households. We have assumed an average
figure, taken from studies by WRAP, of 180kg per hhld, giving a total of 265,000 tonnes if all
households were home composting (which, logically, they could not be).
International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes