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All plastic packaging, including soft plastic, can now be placed in your recycling bin, as long as it is clean, dry and loose. Photo: iStock

Recycling has become easier this year. Investing in new technology in a recycling center means that all plastic packaging waste, including soft plastics, can now be placed in your household recycling bin.

In the past, soft plastics had to be put in trash cans, although some were actually recyclable. Soft plastics are those that you can knead into a ball with your hands, such as pasta bags. The new development not only makes the lives of residents easier, but as a country, it helps us strive to achieve our EU recycling goals.

The Sustainable Irish Climate Action Special Report looks at how oral services for sustainable development are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of businesses. It lists the top five climate activists in Ireland and provides guidance on all recycling issues, as well as the environment An article with science editor Kevin on O'Sullivan on Cop26 and how the stakes can't be higher.

View the full report in the print edition of the Irish Times on Thursday, through the Irish Times e-newsletter, or through the Irish Times Special Reports Digital Center.

Currently in Ireland, we recycle 31% of plastic packaging. By 2025, we need to recycle 50%, and by 2030, we need to recycle 55%. Being able to recycle soft plastics will help.

"Technology for separating different material types in recycling facilities has made progress. Recyclable plastics are sent to specialized polymer-specific recycling facilities. If recycling is not currently possible, it will be sent as solid recycled fuel (SRF) to replace cement kilns. Fossil fuels in China,” said Pauline McDonagh of MyWaste.ie, the official waste management website for households and the first website to seek guidance on what to go.

Simply putting things in the right trash can make a big difference. Every year recycling facilities see as much as 20% of recyclable materials into general waste, and up to 30% of non-recyclable items are put into recycling bins.

So here is where you can throw garbage.

All plastic packaging, including soft plastic, can now be placed in your recycling bin, as long as it is clean, dry and loose. This includes shopping plastic films, plastic beverage bottles, plastic buckets, containers and food trays, yogurt jars, shampoo and shower gel bottles.

Any plastic that can be kneaded into a ball by hand, including packing pillows, bubble wrap, and bread wrappers. There are also plastic tote bags, fresh-keeping bags, all kinds of wrapping paper from toilet paper to new mattresses, breakfast cereal bags, dried fruit and nut bags, cheese wrappers, baked goods films, cookie wrappers, wet paper towels, and outer packaging, and Label bags for detergent or dishwashers, and even wrapping paper from garden compost bags can now enter your recycling bin.

Non-deformable ones, such as shampoo bottles, ice cream buckets, salad bowls, household detergent bottles, mouthwash bottles, and plastic flower pots. These enter the recycling bin as usual. Just make sure they are clean and dry. There should be no food or liquid inside. Store them loosely. Don't put them in a plastic bag first, or stuff something into other things, such as stuffing a food bucket into a cereal box.

Because although Ireland’s garbage disposal facilities are highly technical, there are still people on the sorting line who have to extract contaminated materials. If used diapers or baby wipes are accidentally mixed with the recycled garbage, this may be irritating. Very unpleasant. However it still happens. Other common pollutants include ash bags from fireplaces, old clothes and garden waste.

Same as above. You may be surprised to find that baby wipes, cosmetics, and cleaning wipes are neither recyclable nor washable. They should go into the general trash can.

Glass bottles and jars. These should be delivered to your local bottle warehouse and placed in the correct bin, depending on whether they are clear, green or brown glass.

Don't put these in your ordinary trash can. WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) includes any item with a plug or battery that has reached the end of its life. This type of waste usually contains a variety of hazardous components that need to be disposed of properly. By recycling them, you also help conserve resources, such as plastic, glass, and metal, which can be recycled and reused in industry.

These are not allowed in your recycling bin. You can dispose of used batteries in special blue boxes located in many retail stores (including local supermarkets) or local WEEE recycling points or recycling centers.

Retail stores that sell batteries will take back similar types of used batteries. This is a free service and you do not need to buy a new battery to use it. By not sending them to landfills, you can protect the environment from potentially hazardous chemicals.

Dispose of them at the recycling center that accepts them or return them to the retailer.

Although the answer is in the name, there are always some items that can cause confusion. Take eggshells as an example. These should be placed in your food waste bin, but put egg cartons in your recycling bin.

This cannot be recycled at all and should be placed in a general trash can.

These are usually made of many different materials, which makes them unsuitable for household recycling and food waste bins. However, some manufacturers will allow you to return them for recycling. In other cases, they must enter the ordinary trash can.

Can not. Good items should go to charity shops or local clothing banks. The rest is in the general trash can.

Can not. It should be placed in a general trash can. If you can, buy it in bulk.

Grass clippings and plant cuttings can enter the food waste bin. If you have goods, please take them to your local recycling center. Do not put any garden waste in the recycling bin.

These must go into the ordinary trash can because it is too difficult to recycle all the different components. The same things, such as blister packs and old nail polish bottles. The used matches must also go into the general trash can.

Once you scrape the leftover crust into the trash can, the takeaway box can enter the recycling bin, even if there is grease on it. However, if there is melted cheese or passata sauce on a part of the box, please tear off that piece of the box and put it in the food waste bin. Frozen pizza boxes purchased in supermarkets are 100% recyclable.

Polystyrene is recyclable, but it should not be placed in your household recycling bin because it will decompose and become useless. Please consult your local recycling center, some people will accept it.

If you just use it to wipe your hands or clean food pots and pans, you can put it in a food waste bin. Otherwise soiled kitchen towels will go into the ordinary trash can. Same as the napkin above.

If it is soiled, it cannot be recycled and must be put into a normal trash can. However, you can put clean aluminum or tin foil in the household recycling bin and just rub it first.

Because these are made of foil-lined paper, they cannot enter the recycling bin, but must enter the general trash.

Also, because they are made of mixed materials, they must go into ordinary trash cans.

The canister is recyclable and can be placed in a recycling bin. Wash them first to remove any food residues, and then let them drip dry. For sanitation and waste disposal companies cannot legally export steel cans and food waste at one time, they must all be cleaned. Bags are a bigger problem. They are usually made of an outer layer of plastic and an inner layer of foil, making it almost impossible to recycle. They go to the trash can, so they buy cans.

These are usually pressurized, such as deodorants or air fresheners, which are considered dangerous and cannot enter your recycling bin. If your local recycling center does not accept them, they must go into your general trash can.

Make sure you only put in recyclable materials. Flatten boxes, plastic bottles and cans.

No, these will be removed during the recycling process.

Have you ever wondered what will happen to your waste? David Duff of Thorntons Recycling, environmental health and safety manager, sorted it all out.

The truck dumped in the reception hall and was inspected. Then use a large loading shovel to push the material into the feed pile. From this inventory, materials are sent to processing equipment. The waste is transported through a series of mechanical sorters that sort most materials by size, density or polymer type.

However, behind each machine is a manual quality control station, where the staff must pick out the items that are missed by the machine, and must also pick out the items that the machine cannot recognize-such as diapers.

Once the material passes through the manual quality control station, it falls into a separate bulk storage area. The materials are packaged, packed into containers, and then entrusted to specialized processing or recycling facilities in Europe or Asia to be recycled into new products.

Tips for collection trucks in the reception area of ​​the composting hall. Use a large loading shovel to mix the incoming material with wood chips and oversized compost that were not completely decomposed during the first pass. This oversized compost is full of healthy bacteria and bugs, so it starts the composting process of new materials.

The mixed materials are put into a large composting area, and air is discharged from the ground through the compost. This provides a favorable environment for bacteria to work and decompose food waste. These compartments will become new compartments every three weeks, and then screened to remove any contamination.

Once the contaminants are removed, the excess material will be sent back to the beginning of the process, and the filtered compost will be stabilized in a large enclosed compartment. Here, the compost is effectively cooked. This kills any pathogens and bacteria to ensure that the compost provided to farmers is clean and safe to use.

The collection truck prompts the truck in the reception hall of the garbage disposal site. Use a crane to pick up the material and send it to the processing plant. Usually, these processing plants are fully automated, and because the waste is more dirty, there are no manual quality control personnel. These machines use magnets, eddy current and wind transfer devices to separate heavy and light objects, and optical sorters to sort waste.

Organic "fine powder" or residues are separated and sent to facilities such as composting plants. Here, the treatment of organic fine powder is similar to composting. At the end of the process, the small waste is sent to the incinerator or landfill, and the stable organic fine powder is sent to the landfill to be used as a cover for the daily waste landfill. The advantage of this process is that when organic fine powder is composted instead of directly landfilled, they process carbon dioxide instead of methane, so the greenhouse gas effect is small.

These machines will sort out steel and aluminum from the waste and send them for recycling.

Light pollutant materials will be separated by the air changer and further crushed to less than 25 mm. These crushed materials continue to become solid recovery fuel or fuel for incinerators.

Heavy objects such as diapers, old textiles and shoes will be separated and sent to incinerators or landfills for disposal.

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