Mr. Liam Moloney:

I thank the committee for inviting us. We are happy to come here today and speak about farm plastics recycling which is a success story. We supplied the committee with a written opening statement some weeks ago. Perhaps committee members had a chance to look at it. Nonetheless, I will give a broad overview in the next few minutes of who we are, where we come from, how we operate and what the current challenges are. I will go back to the beginning. In the 1990s it was quite obvious that Irish farmers had a problem, which was a new plastic waste stream they had to manage. Despite their best efforts it was difficult for them to manage it in a responsible way and that a solution was needed. In the late 1990s, the key stakeholders, including the producers of farm-plastic products, that is, the companies that manufacture and import it, the farmers via the Irish Farmers' Association, IFA, and the Department of the Environment came together and found a solution to the problem through the Waste Management (Farm Plastics) Regulations 2001. Those regulations made it law that companies that put certain farm plastics on the market had to contribute to recycling costs. They could do so in two ways, namely by joining a scheme such as the IFFPG scheme or by self complying. Self-compliance means taking the waste back from their customers. I should say that everyone in Ireland who is compliant, is compliant through our organisation, IFFPG.

Once the farm plastics regulations were put in place, they gave the wherewithal for the licensing of a recycling compliance scheme and in 1998 IFFPG was licensed as one of the first recycling compliance schemes in Ireland. IFFPG is owned by our producer members, that is the companies that put the farm-plastic products on the market, and the IFA. We are a not-for-profit body. IFFPG was given the remit of managing this area. The objectives of the company are as people would imagine. We must offer compliance to companies that put certain farm-plastic products on the market. We must offer a comprehensive collection service for farmers throughout the country. We must achieve recycling targets and as a minimum hit the target of 70% set by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. The overarching objective of the scheme is to ensure that our rural environment stays cleans and to support circular economy initiatives. We are funded by two means, which are the producer contribution, which makes up the majority of our funding. It is the charge we levy on our members who put farm-plastic products on the market and a weight-based collection charge we levy on farmers. We chose this funding model because it encourages farmers to bring cleaner plastic to our bring centres or collection points because we weigh the plastics. The collections are carried out by a network of approved contractors who are selected through an open national tendering process, which is typically held every five years. Those contractors collect the material on our behalf. The vast majority of the plastic is collected at bring centres. Typically, we run between 200 and 225 bring centres each year during the early to late summer period. We collect 90% of the plastic at the bring centres. We also provide a farmyard collection service for farmers who cannot avail of the bring centre service.

The results are hugely impressive by any measure. At the moment we are achieving a recycling rate of 88% which is exceptionally high for a plastic waste stream. No other plastic waste stream in Ireland comes anywhere near that level. Our scheme is seen as a model scheme in Europe when it comes to recycling silage plastics waste. The volume we are collecting every year is in the region of 36,000 or 37,000 tonnes of silage plastics waste.

I will just put that in language that people might be able to better relate to. That is the equivalent to plastic from 18 million silage bales, so it is a huge volume of plastic. Typically, perhaps 20 million or 21 million silage bales are made in Ireland each year. In the past five years alone, we have grown recycling by 40%. For most Irish farmers now, recycling of farm plastics waste is a mainstream activity that they engage in every year or every second year. There is no mystery or novelty to it; it is just something they do. They expect our bring centres to be held and they engage with the service.

The scheme is not without its challenges, however. As members are probably aware, over the past five years, the big challenge has been a very difficult farm plastics recycling market. This is because of global events. If we go back five or six years, we see that the Chinese closed their doors on importing plastics waste, for good reasons, and the result was that Europe became flooded with excess plastic, the small positive value that we used to get from our plastic disappeared and large gate fees were reintroduced. Five or six years ago, we saw a situation develop where the costs were spiralling and there was also reduced demand from recyclers. There has, however, been an increase in recycling capacity in recent years. We are pleased to see that a number of Irish recyclers have got involved in the market. We support them in as much as we can but, nevertheless, sometimes there are capacity issues.

As members are aware, we had Covid in 2020 and 2021, as a result of which the output of plants was reduced and it again became more difficult and expensive to recycle. When Covid ended the war in Ukraine came along and, as we all know, that caused a spiral in the cost of fuel and energy, which drove up recycling costs. The recycling market has been a big challenge in recent years. Nevertheless, everything we collect, we send for recycling. We have put in place measures to ensure that for the coming period, we should be able to collect any volume of material and send it for recycling. That is just a quick overview of who we are and where we come from. We are very happy to be here to engage with the committee in constructive discussion.