WEEE Ireland recycling since 2005

WEEE Ireland and the Irish Public Recycles over 75 Million Electrical Waste Items since 2005

10 Years of WEEE Ireland Diverts 250,000 Tonnes of Electrical Wastefrom Landfill

Over 25% of Irish people are still hoarding or throwing out electrical waste at home

  • 75 million waste electrical items collected since 2005, that’s over 70 electrical items per household
  • 250,000 tonnes of electrical waste diverted from landfill since 2005. Packed into 50,000 truckloads, nose to tail, the diverted electrical waste would stretch from Dublin to Paris (1,066km)
  • In 10 years 2,300 tonnes of portable waste batteries collected – the equivalent of over 125 million AA batteries
  • Most of us are now aware that we can recycle WEEE for free but 1 in 4 Irish people are still hoarding or putting electrical waste in the rubbish bin at home
  • Since 2005 the fridge freezer recycling programme has diverted the equivalent of almost 90,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions from the atmosphere
  • Ireland is a WEEE recycling champion – all WEEE Ireland’s recycling contractors have recently received the European WEEE label of excellence standard – WEEELABEX for high quality electrical waste management processes
  • WEEE Ireland would like to thank all electrical stakeholders for their recycling efforts in the last 10 years

WEEE Ireland, today announced their milestone figures for electric and battery recycling over the past 10 years. Since 2005 WEEE Ireland have increased the WEEE take back rate in their collection areas to over 50% of household WEEE. This means the Scheme has already surpassed the 2016 EU target (45%) on behalf of its Members.

However, with continuous increasing EU targets designed to encourage us all to recycle more the challenge remains for Ireland to hit a 65% collection for recycling level by 2019.

Ireland is a superb student when it comes to electronic recycling and has graduated with honours from the first decade of WEEE recycling as one of the top WEEE recyclers in Europe. Since the creation of WEEE Ireland in 2005, the compliance scheme have managed to divert over 250,000 tonnes of electrical waste from landfill, the equivalent of 50,000 truckloads, who, when lined up would fill the distance from Dublin to Paris.

This was made up of over 75million waste electrical items including old TVs, dishwashers, kettles and toasters, DVD players, electrical toys, tools and more, meaning on average every Irish household recycled 70 items in that 10-year period. This included 3 million monitors and screens.