Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The problem is not always collection and the EU directive refers to collection, separation and reuse. In Ireland, the vast majority of bring banks are not for separation. Liberty Recycling is the only one that separates but, even with that, the capacity is not there to deal with all of the textile waste in Ireland. We do not even have a figure for that, although we know that 1.4 million metric tonnes are exported from the EU, mainly to Africa, and it ends up being dumped in Africa. That is the scale of the problem in Europe, and we have a percentage of that in Ireland. There is an urgent need to scale up the capacity but also to make sure that when those tenders go out from different local authorities, this is not just for collection and export abroad, but for collection, separation and reuse. These have to be central.

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