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All Councils in Northern Ireland continue to send waste for energy recovery.

31 May 2019

All Councils in Northern Ireland continue to send waste for energy recovery.

RDF bales being loaded on to a ship for export to an Energy from Waste Plant.

Waste Sent for Energy Recovery from NI Councils has increased over a 9 years period from 2009 until 2018.

 

The amount of municipal waste sent for energy recovery forms part of the 11th Annual Northern Ireland Environmental Statistics Report.

 

There was zero, or very small quantities, of LAC municipal waste sent for energy recovery before 2009/10. Strong growth followed from 2010/11 to 2017/18 with the energy recovery rate increasing from 0.4% in 2009/10 to 18.4% in 2017/18. Most of the growth has been driven by mixed residual LAC municipal waste sent for energy recovery, with the specific streams proportion e.g. wood reaching 2-3% in 2013/14 and remaining around that level since.

 

Mixed residual LAC municipal waste sent for energy recovery is combustible residual waste collected from the kerbside and from civic amenity sites and processed into refuse derived fuel (RDF) at material recovery facilities.

 

Further information on the annual figures can be found in the information produced by DAERA/NIEA on Local Authority Collected Municipal Waste Statistics which are accessible on their website. This shows that during 2017/18 every council in Northern Ireland sent municipal waste for energy recovery with 98,123 tonnes originating from arc21 councils which equates to 54.5% of the total for Northern Ireland. All councils have sent municipal waste for energy recovery for the last five years.