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Soft plastics

Soft plastics, along with rigid plastics, paper and card, tins and cans are now accepted in your household recycle bin.

Why are soft plastics now allowed to be placed in your recycling bin?

There are two reasons:

  • Improvements to facilities along with
  • Emergence of new markets.

In Ireland we collect all recyclables in the same bin and the sorting of all these materials take place at a recycling facility.

Irish recycling plants are upgrading their mechanised sorting facilities to allow for more sorting of plastic. Until 2020 Irish recycling facilities could only process rigid plastics. Most plastics collected in Ireland are exported for recycling. Over the past year a number of new markets specifically handling soft plastics have emerged and Irish plastic can now be exported to these facilities for recycling. If it cannot currently be recycled it will be sent as Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) to replace fossil fuels at cement kilns.