Home > About Repak

About Repak | Recycling in Ireland | Recycling Information

Repak was founded by Irish industry in 1997 to facilitate and grow packaging recycling. We are a not for profit packaging recycling scheme, funded only by industry members. Based on the principle of producer responsibility, Repak was established to help businesses meet their legal obligations to fund the recovery and recycling of the packaging on the goods or services they supply, as set out in the Waste Management (Packaging) Regulations 2007.

Repak does not recycle; we use the levies our members pay us to fund the collection and recycling of materials by local authorities and contractors. We are not a government body and do not receive any funding from the government. All our revenue is generated through the fees our members pay us.

How is Repak Funded?

Repak is solely funded from packaging levies, as charged to its participating businesses, and operates on a not for profit basis. Repak’s members are charged on the type and amount of packaging they produce, so the more packaging they place on the Irish market, the more they pay. Repak has designed its fee structure in this way to reduce the level of packaging manufacturers choose to use and to encourage the use of easier to collect and recycle materials.

Repak Achievements:

Membership of Repak ensures member companies meet their responsibility to the environment and to the Irish public by contributing to the cost of recycling the packaging which they supply to their customers.

Over the last decade, membership of Repak has enabled over 2,000 Irish businesses to contribute €180m to support Ireland’s national packaging recycling programmes. This funding supports:

Door to door recycling collection services reaching 1 million households throughout Ireland
Over 2,000 bring banks nationwide for glass, cans, plastic and other recyclable materials
Up to 100 recycling centres that accept used packaging and other household recyclables
Promotion and education of packaging recycling in schools, homes and businesses
Ireland has achieved a packaging recycling rate of 64% through the financial contribution of Irish businesses. In 2008 this partnership resulted in the recovery for recycling of over 700,000 tonnes of used packaging. Since Repak’s establishment in 1997 over 4.4m tonnes of used packaging has been diverted from landfill, the equivalent of enough waste to fill 1.9m waste trucks creating a trail long enough to stretch from Dublin to New York!

Every year, the contribution Repak members make to packaging recycling results in a saving of nearly 260,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions, the same as taking over 140,000 cars off Irish roads. Ireland is now ranked among the best performing states in the EU for packaging recycling.