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Recyling Myth Busters

Recycling materials collected from recycling bins at homes, schools and offices are sent to large facilities in Ireland to be sorted. Once sorted, the recycled materials are used to make new products, such as:

Glass: glass bottles and jars
Plastic: carrier bags, plastic bottles & fleece jumpers
Steel: bicycle frames, cars & paper clips

Paper: tissues, magazines & newspapers.
Aluminium cans: drinks cans & engine parts.
Wood: timber products such as chipboard.

For more information on what can be recycled, visit our recycling materials page.

The recycled materials collected have a market value. But it is very expensive to collect and sort the materials. So recycling costs money. 75% of Ireland's recycling material is exported because we do not have primary manufacturing industries such as steel mills and paper pulp factories to turn these recycled materials into new products. We do have some small Irish recyclers and many primary processors who add value to recycled materials before export or transfer to the final material recyclers. Ireland also has a thriving glass recycling business. Much of the glass collected is recycled in Ireland by companies such as Rehab Recycle, Quinn Glass and Glassco Recycling.

The UK and mainland Europe are the main destination for recycled materials exported from Ireland. Asia and China account for less than 15% of direct recycling exports.

In Ireland large producers of packaging or packaged products are obligated to help fund the recycling and recovery of the packaging they supply. Many companies do this by paying packaging levies to Repak. Repak then uses these funds to support packaging recycling collections such as household 'green' bins, recycling centre collections and bring bank collections. Repak has more than 2,300 participating Irish member companies.