Opening of Materials Recovery Facility at Ballymount

Press Release 19th January 2009

Minister Gormley opens new Materials Recovery Facility for the Dublin Region

John Gormley, TD, Minister for the Environment, Heritage & Local Government in the presence of Councillor Guss OConnell, Deputy Mayor of South Dublin County officially opened the Dublin Local Authorities Regional Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at the Merrywell Industrial Estate, Ballymount on Monday 19^th January.

This facility has been developed to process material collected from green bins throughout the Dublin Region (South Dublin County, Dublin City, Fingal County and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County) and has capacity to process 100,000 tonnes per annum of mixed dry recyclables. This state of the art facility is one of the largest and most sophisticated in Europe. The provision of the Materials Recovery Facility is a specific objective of the Dublin Region Waste Management Plan 2005-2010 and will ensure the long-term stability and recyclable waste processing capacity needs of the Dublin Region for the next 20 years. The Facility was developed at a cost of 36 million with 75% funding provided by the Department of Environment, Heritage & Local Government.

The processing equipment consists of highly sophisticated proven screening systems supplemented with optical sorting and manual quality control to separate recyclables namely paper, cardboard, tetrapak, aluminium cans, steel cans and plastics. Greyhound Recycling & Recovery manages and operates the facility on behalf of the Dublin Region Local Authorities as part of their contract for the green waste in the region.

The benefits of this facility are

• Ability to recycle a broader range of materials including all clean plastics
• Better use of recyclable resources
• Less material going to landfill
• The current recycling rate for the Region is 30% fast climbing to the 2013 target of 59%.

Minister John Gormley stated It is a vital piece of infrastructure that will be of benefit to the people of Dublin for many years to come and represents the type of sustainable, clean, efficient and cost-effective waste management system that is a basic requirement to ensure, not only the quality of the environment, but sustainable growth and economic prosperity.

Councillor Guss OConnell, Deputy Mayor of South Dublin County said he was very impressed with the state of the art equipment at the facility. I am also very pleased to see that there is a training room on site and hope that all schools and Community groups in Dublin will come and visit and see for themselves where the material from their green bin goes commented the Deputy Mayor.

Full details of the green bin recycling service available on www.greenbin.ie

For further information contact: John Quinlivan, Senior Executive Officer, Environmental Services, South Dublin County Council jquinlivan@sdublincoco.ie