Ireland is at severe risk of failing to deliver on its ability to deal with hazardous waste, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has warned.
Although the amount of hazardous waste being produced has fallen over the last three years, Ireland is heavily reliant on shipping dangerous waste abroad.
A waste is hazardous when it can harm human health or the environment because it is explosive, oxidising, flammable, irritant, toxic, carcinogenic, corrosive, infectious, mutagenic, sensitising or eco-toxic.
Ireland is lacking sufficient facilities to process solvents, oils, electronic equipment and batteries, the EPA warns.
Surplus and out of date medicines also need to be carefully disposed of.
The EPA warns that progress has been slow despite a raft of studies looking at how unwanted drugs were dealt with in other European countries.
The latest budget allocated €1 million for the Department of Health to expanse a national pharmacy medicine return scheme.
The EPA says that a national collection system for surplus and out-of-date medicines was supposed to have been set up by 2023.
The agency is watching to see whether the money that has now been allocated by the government will resolve the problem.
Dealing with hazardous farm waste is also proving difficult.
Last year around 600 farmers took part in a trial waste removal service. Almost 95 tonnes of hazardous waste was collected.
A national programme of regional farm hazardous waste collection points is due to be rolled out by the end of this year.
The EPA says the trial showed that farmers are willing to “engage and contribute to the costs of appropriate hazardous waste disposal”, but they need to be more closely involved.
Hazardous farm waste includes equipment, oil and unused veterinary products. Sheep dip is also another big source of potentially dangerous waste.
The EPA’s report comes at the mid-term of Ireland’s National Hazardous Waste Management Plan which runs from 2021 to 2027.
The report notes that some improvements have been made, including the setting up of 26 collection points across the country for households to dump unwanted paints.
Overall hazardous waste decreased from 580,000 tonnes in 2019 to 381,000 tonnes in 2023.
Commenting on the report, David Flynn, Director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Sustainability, said:
“Our report, published today, highlights a strong case for investment in Ireland’s hazardous waste treatment infrastructure. This is needed to ensure highly polluting hazardous wastes are properly and safely managed. Ireland exports half of its hazardous waste for treatment. We cannot continue to rely on other countries to treat significant quantities of hazardous wastes generated in Ireland.
This mid-term evaluation presents updates on the implementation of all the recommendations and actions identified in the Plan with seventeen recommendations completed or on-track to date.”
Responding to the report, a spokesperson at the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment said:
The EU Waste Framework Directive, 2008/98/EC, requires all Member States to set up separate collection systems for hazardous waste fractions produced by households by 1st January 2025. Ireland already has a well-developed collection network for household hazardous with many civic amenity sites accepting a range of hazardous waste materials.
We also have well-established Extended Producer Responsibility schemes for waste batteries and waste electronic equipment. However, in an effort to make it as easy as possible for all households to dispose of their hazardous waste, the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment has made significant funding of up to €2 million available to the local authority sector in 2025, via the Regional Waste Management Planning Offices, to fund household hazardous waste collections days throughout the State.
In addition, the Department continues to closely cooperate with the Department of Health to help facilitate the collection of unused and expired medicines and with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to facilitate the collection of various hazardous wastes arising on farms.”