{"id":481780,"date":"2026-06-04T00:27:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T00:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/481780\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T00:27:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T00:27:28","slug":"more-food-waste-going-into-general-bins-than-compost-waste-experts-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/481780\/","title":{"rendered":"More food waste going into general bins than compost waste experts warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Executives in the Irish waste system told The Hard Shoulder that Irish homes struggle to use the right bags for the compost bins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Waste experts have warned that Ireland is seeing more food waste going into general bins than compost.<\/a><\/p>\n

Not all biodegradable bags can be put into a compost bin which causes issues with proper waste recycling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Executives in the Irish waste system told The Hard Shoulder that Irish homes struggle to use the right bags for the compost bins.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Secretary of the Irish Waste Management Association, Conor Walsh told The Hard Shoulder host Ciara Kelly that she wasn\u2019t alone in thinking compostable and biodegradable bags were the same and using them interchangeably.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a difference between compostable bags and biodegradable bags\u201d, he told Newstalk on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not our biggest concern in the waste industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest concern, actually, is that there’s more food waste going into the general waste bin than into the brown bins across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to encourage people to use the brown bin and use compostable liners<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they’re labelled compostable, buy them, they’re fine. I don’t think the public should get hung up on the difference between compostable and biodegradable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The contamination in brown bins reaches between 5 to 10 percent, he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Food Food waste in a recycling caddy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t as high as the recycling bin but it\u2019s more problematic in the brown bin because it\u2019s harder to get out once it\u2019s mixed in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waste experts warn about brown bin usage<\/p>\n

Mr Conor Walsh of the Irish Waste Management Association,\u00a0added that it was up to the product specification authorities to make sure bags were correctly labelled in the supermarket.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it’s made from cornstarch, whether they call it biodegradable or compostable, it’s fine. It will break down in the environment\u201d, Mr Walsh said.<\/p>\n

Tad Kirakowski, chief executive of Voice Ireland,\u00a0 said that efforts were being made to ensure that brown bins were being used to sort food waste effectively.<\/p>\n

\"Food Food waste in a recycling bin at home, 16-9-17. Image: Daisy-Daisy \/ Alamy<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that the huge amount of material that’s in your general waste bin could be going into those food waste bins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere this conversation gets a little bit more tricky is when we look past the bags and we start to look at where most of us engage with those compostable materials and it’s when we’re getting the coffee on the go or the food on the go and the cup that you get it in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Walsh added that there was an argument for large bins as opposed to small bins, with bug bins lowering the risk of people \u201cputting things in the wrong bin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Executives in the Irish waste system told The Hard Shoulder that Irish homes struggle to use the right…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-481780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}