News Room

To celebrate the third year of our Team Green initiative we are calling on households across the nation to find Ireland’s newest Repak Team Green Leaders. We are asking the public to join Anna Geary, Paul and Gary O’Donovan, Paul McGrath, Roz Purcell and Bobby Kerr in leading the charge to increase packaging recycling in Ireland.

In the last few months, the people of Ireland have demonstrated the power of working together to achieve a common goal more than ever. While the Irish public’s teamwork has been evident since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, what perhaps many may not realise is how effective the nation has been, coming together to protect Ireland’s environment and improving their recycling behaviours. Repak has seen that recycling rates are up and contamination in the recycling bins are down.

Do you know where to dispose of items that can’t go into your household recycling bin? It’s very important that you dispose of your waste correctly or you risk contaminating your recycling bin. Nappies, wipes, bags of ash, clothes and garden waste are the worst offenders.

Recycling is easy once you know how and we can all make difference by working together.  Our new website acts as a complete guide to help you recycle your packaging waste correctly, providing recycling tips and hack videos to FAQs. Get your friends and family involved and teach them to put the right thing in the right bin.

Every year at least 30% of what goes into the recycling bin is contaminated. To help educate the public on best practice recycling behaviours we have developed a new and improved series of recycling hack videos that focus on recycling your cleaning products, beauty products, takeaway packaging.

Over one hundred of Ireland’s industry leaders will this year divert a total of 16,100 tonnes of plastic packaging waste from the Irish market according to the findings of a report conducted by Repak on the plastic recycling behaviour of its Plastic Pledge initiative membership.The news is part of Repak’s second progress report of its Plastic Pledge initiative, which highlights the continued proactive approach that 115 of Ireland’s industry leaders are taking to remove avoidable plastics, with an emphasis on single use plastics, from their business premises and from sale

The news was announced this morning by Repak, Ireland’s only government-approved packaging recycling compliance scheme, at the launch of its 2019 Annual Report. The title of this year’s report ‘Backing our Future’ is reflective of the strategic realignment made by Repak in 2019 to ensure it is best positioned to achieve all future EU packaging recycling targets.

Join football heroes Paul McGrath and Jack Byrne in putting the right thing in the right bin. Show us you are a recycling expert with a score of 1000 or more, sign up to Team Green, and you could be in with the chance to win a €100 One4All voucher. There are six vouchers up for grabs and each week we will announce a winner through our social media channels.

Repak is supporting the heroic efforts and sacrifices made by Irish frontline heath workers by donating €11,000 to ‘Feed The Heroes’, an initiative which was born as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. From April to June 2020, Repak pledged to donate €1 to ‘Feed The Heroes’ on the behalf of every individual who has ever signed up to Team Green.

Our new Packaging Design Guide provides Members with valuable information on the various stages involved in packaging recycling, and how the design of packaging impacts on those stages, potentially rendering materials non-recyclable.

Repak launched the ‘colour in for a chance to win’ competition in April which invited children to download and colour in posters from its Team Green for Schools primary school recycling resources and add their top recycling tip. The competition also encouraged children who did not have printers at home to get creative and recreate the Repak posters. Entries were submitted to Repak’s Facebook and Instagram accounts over the course of the two-week social media campaign.

Repak has launched a Colouring Competition today on Instagram, inviting children to download and colour in posters from its Team Green for Schools Primary School resources and add their own recycling tips!

We are very conscious of the impact the current Covid 19 pandemic is having on our Members and stakeholders, and are committed to providing as much support as possible during these challenging times.

To support the heroic efforts of Ireland’s frontline healthcare workers, Repak is supporting the Feed the Heroes initiative during the months of April and May, by donating €1 on behalf on any individual who joins its Team Green campaign, which currently has over 8,000 members.

Over half of the Irish public will keep up tradition of buying chocolate Easter eggs this year Repak encourages everyone to continue to recycle at home this Easter At least 1 in 10 will buy 8 or more chocolate eggs, yet over two thirds (69%) don’t plan to spend more than €20

Expanded and Extruded Polystyrene in Europe – Products and End of Life Options.Repak, in partnership with Maeve Thornberry & Associates and the Department of Housing, Planning & Local Government, recently participated in a Europe wide project known as OceanWise.

Repak and Panda raise €20,000 for Focus Ireland in Dublin city plastic recycling initiative. Repak and Panda donation will provide aid to 17 households, helping them to move on from homelessness.

Ireland is now generating 11,740 tonnes of packaging waste from online shopping per year, an increase of 17% from 2018. Repak warns that packaging waste generated from online shopping continues to grow without any accountability from overseas online retailers.

Inspired by the "12 Days of Christmas" Repak has launched a creative campaign on social media channels today, offering one recycling tip a day for 12 days over the festive season.

New research from Repak reveals shoppers’ behaviour this Christmas. Ireland is expected to generate 75,000 tonnes of packaging waste this Christmas 68% say that the environment will influence how they shop at Christmas 57% consciously purchase Christmas gifts that come with recyclable packaging 80% plan to shop local.

Aran Islands Co-op Recycling Project (Athchursail Árann) awarded the overall 2019 Pakman Award for its work transforming the waste management and recycling infrastructure on the Aran Islands.

Coca Cola won the inaugural ‘Repak Plastic Pledge Member of the Year’ category at the Pakman Awards, which took place in Dublin last night. The new category was open to any of over 90 Repak members who have signed the Plastic Pledge, committing to achieve specific objectives relating to reducing plastic packaging and increasing the recyclability of packaging.

Quinn Packaging is one of the UK and Ireland’s leading thermoformed food packaging manufacturers. Detecta is its new flagship product addressing the problem of carbon black packaging commonly used in plastic trays for meat, poultry and convenience foods

NPP is a leading supplier in the flexible packaging market. NPP specialises in delivering high quality packaging and service to a range of industries including Food, Agri, Pharmaceutical and Medical Device.

Musgrave is Ireland’s leading food retail, wholesale and foodservice company with brands including SuperValu, Centra, Daybreak, Frank and Honest as well as Musgrave MarketPlace. The Musgrave sustainability strategy ‘Taking Care of our World’ is based on 4 key principles; eliminate, reduce, replace and educate.

Lidl operates over 162 stores in Ireland providing high quality products at market leading value. Its award winning sustainability strategy ‘A Better Tomorrow’ has resulted in several resource efficient plastic initiatives.

Irish Distillers is Ireland’s leading supplier of spirits and wines and producer of the world’s most well-known and successful Irish whiskeys. In 2019, its parent company, Pernod Ricard, launched a Sustainability and Responsibility Roadmap towards 2030 based on four key pillars.

Danone is a leading global food & beverage company built on three businesses: Essential Dairy and PlantBased Products, Waters and Specialised Nutrition. The Danone vision is ‘One Planet. One Health’, and has committed to recycling, reusing or composting all of its packaging by 2025.

In 2018, the Coca-Cola system launched its global World Without Waste strategy, setting out a commitment to design more sustainable packaging and to collect and recycle the equivalent of every bottle or can it sells by 2030 to achieve a true circular economy for packaging.

With over 3,750 employees and 139 stores across the country, Aldi is the fastest growing retailer in Ireland, capturing a market share of 12.6% (Kantar Worldpanel, August, 2019). Aldi signed up to Repak’s Plastic Pledge in 2018, in addition to creating its own packaging commitments.

ABP was founded in 1954 and is one of Europe’s leading food processors. Its core business – ABP Beef – is supported by its renewable pet food and protein divisions, ensuring the value of by-products is maximised and the environmental impact is minimised.

Plastic recycling fundraising drive launched across Panda Greenstar’s Dublin city centre commercial network. Irish packaging recycling scheme, Repak, and leading waste operator, Panda, have today announced a new joint initiative to support Focus Ireland

Ireland Surpasses All EU Recycling Targets with highest ever rate of recycling and recovery of packaging waste Repak, Ireland’s packaging recycling compliance scheme, funded the recycling and recovery of 904,249 tonnes of packaging in 2018, a 10.5% increase on 2017.

Teamwork makes Ireland’s future recycling targets achievable! Over 11.4 million more pieces of plastic have been recycled in Ireland since Repak launched Team Green Repak calls on the Irish public to join Team Green and increase plastic recycling.

A quarter of the Irish public don’t know what measures Irish companies are taking to protect the environment Repak research reveals Ireland’s attitudes to the sustainability efforts of organisations Almost three quarters (72%) make a conscious choice to only shop or engage with Irish companies who are contributing to protecting the environment.

Now in its fifth year, the Pakman Awards, powered by Repak, recognises excellence in sustainability, recycling and efforts to reduce climate change. Entry to the 2019 Pakman Awards is free, and nominations will close at midnight on 31st August 2019.

Joining the Irish personalities leading the charge to increase Ireland’s recycling rates today, is former All Ireland Cork camogie winning champion and teamwork advocate, Anna Geary. Anna has vast experience working as part of a team and since joining Repak’s Team Green, has not only committed to recycling one more piece of plastic a week, but has also made a conscious effort to educate herself on how to recycle better.

Team Green, powered by Repak, was founded to support Ireland in achieving its new recycling targets which have been set by the European Commission. Ireland needs to increase its plastic recycling by almost double to achieve these new targets.

Over 10,000 Tonnes of Plastic Waste Avoided Thanks to ‘Plastic Pledge’ – Minister Bruton 66 Industry leaders sign up to the Repak Plastics Pledge, eliminating 27,277 tonnes of C02 from the atmosphere.

Aldi Stores Ireland is a signatory to Ireland’s Food Waste Charter. Aldi is also partnered with FoodCloud and to date has donated over 1.5 million meals (almost 640 tonnes of surplus food) to charities across Ireland.

In 2018 Lucozade Ribena Suntory Ireland Ltd. celebrated the achievement that Ribena had been using 100% recycled plastic in its bottles for over ten years. Lucozade added communication around this to the front of its packaging and used social channels to drive awareness and encourage consumers to keep the recycling loop going.

Aurivo Co-operative Society is currently investigating the elimination of PVC plastics from the supply chain and replacing these with easily recyclable or compostable alternatives. During 2019 Aurivo plans to increase the recyclability of its current offering through design modifications.

Musgrave Plc implemented a range of plastic reduction strategies in 2018 which resulted in the removal of 460 tonnes of non-detectable black plastic trays across 44 Fruit & Vegetable product lines.

Britvic Ireland has reduced plastic bottle weights across a number of soft drink categories and in 2018 it reduced bottle weights on its Fruit Shoot range from 16 to 15 grams (6%) and 21 to 17 grams (15%). In addition it has reduced plastic in its 850ml cordial products from 38.5 to 37 grams (4%) and on 2 litre carbonated soft drink products from 43.5 to 43 grams (1%).

Clean Ireland Recycling has been named as the winner of the 2018 Overall Pakman Award, sponsored by Repak, at the fourth annual Pakman Awards. The awards ceremony, which took place at the InterContinental Hotel in Dublin, saw 400 delegates from leading businesses, organisations and community groups come together to recognise excellence in recycling, sustainability and waste management.

The Pakman Awards, powered by Repak, has announced the shortlist of nominees for 2018. Amongst those shortlisted this year are Repak members Insomnia Coffee Company, Tesco Ireland, Sandymount Hotel, Aldi, Lidl and Dell EMC, as well as community projects such as FoodCloud, Ennis Tidy Town and initiatives such as CupPrint.

Environmental champions needed! Repak has today officially launched Team Green, a new initiative powered by the not for profit recycling scheme, that is designed to educate the Irish public on the importance of recycling more. By joining Team Green, Irish residents are showing a commitment to increasing the nation’s recycling levels and support for Ireland to achieve its future recycling targets.

Ireland must increase its plastic packaging recycling by as much as 80% by 2030 if it is to meet strict EU targets on plastic recycling according to Repak, which says the move will require a ‘major social attitudinal change to plastic use, reuse and recycling’.

Repak, Ireland’s only government-approved recycling compliance scheme, has today released its annual report, announcing that Ireland has surpassed all recycling and recovery targets in 2017 for the twentieth year in a row.

Leading Irish businesswoman Chanelle, Lady McCoy, alongside Chief Executive of Repak, Seamus Clancy, today launched the call for entries for the 4th annual Pakman Awards. The Pakman Awards is now in its fourth year and seeks to find and celebrate Ireland’s recycling and waste management champions in 2018.

Packaging Waste Segregation: Making the Most of our Resources. Your business continues to make a vitally important contribution to making Ireland one of Europe’s top recycling nations. However it is important that despite current challenges in the plastic recycling markets, we continue this great work.

Irish residents consume an estimated 17.5 million chocolate eggs at Easter. As consumption figures increase, so too will the amount of packaging waste that is generated. The findings from the latest Repak research have revealed how important it is to not only recycle, but to do so correctly, over the Easter period.

Swipe right for recycling! Repak calls on the nation to fall in love with recycling this Valentine’s Day. Over 500 people were questioned for the Repak study, which found that 92% think littering is an unattractive trait in a date, while four out of five people (80%) said that seeing a potential love interest litter would affect their opinion of them.

Repak has announced the results of new research* revealing Ireland’s recycling habits over the festive season which shows that while Irish shoppers claim to have the best of intentions, very few check where the packaging generated by retailers ends up.

In anticipation of the excesses of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and of course the Christmas season, Repak commissioned a report by Dr. Pat McCloughan, Managing Director of PMCA Economic Consulting, on the volume of online consumer sales and the impact this has on additional packaging in Ireland.

RTÉ was this evening named the winner of the 2017 Pakman Award, sponsored by Repak, at the third annual Pakman Awards. The awards ceremony, which took place at the InterContinental Dublin Hotel, saw 400 representatives from leading businesses, organisations and community groups come together to recognise excellence in recycling, energy and waste management.

Repak announced that Aldi Stores Ireland Limited, Clean Ireland Recycling, daa, Sligo University Hospital and Tipperary County Council have this morning are amongst the shortlist of nominees for the third annual Pakman Awards, powered by Repak.

The not for profit recycling scheme reflects on the outstanding accomplishments to date and looks to the future of recycling in Ireland.Since its establishment in 1997, Repak has played a pivotal role in diverting over 10 million tonnes of packaging recycling from landfill. Repak has also assisted in providing a recycling bin outside almost every Irish household with the support of its extensive member network.

Repak Recycle Week 2017 #repak20 This Repak Recycle Week we are celebrating 20 years of packaging recycling success in Ireland. Repak was established in 1997 in accordance with EU legislation that was created to ensure certain businesses – known as Repak members – were responsible for the packaging they placed on the Irish market.

#ShopRepakMember Almost all Irish people think retailers have an obligation to recycle properly Repak research reveals Ireland’s preferences for recycling over the festive season. Over 93% of people think that retailers have an obligation to recycle properly Just over 50% are unaware that retailers are legally obligated to recycle.

In 2016, Repak met all recycling rates and recovery targets. Repak funded the recovery and recycling of 794,848 tonnes of packaging placed on the Irish market, 32,384 tonnes more than 2015.

Leading Irish businesswomen Chanelle McCoy, alongside Chairman of Repak, Tony Keohane, launched the call for entries for the third annual Pakman Awards to find Ireland’s recycling and waste management champions for 2017.

Over half of Irish residents (52%) are planning to be a good egg and recycle all Easter egg packaging. 41% plan to make a big trip to the recycling centre during or after the Easter holidays and 61% think people who put incorrect material in the recycling bin should be financially penalised for contamination. In addition, 58% agree that recovery operators such as Panda are right to put cameras in bins to determine who the waste contamination culprits are.

Repak has created the ‘Recycle and Change for the Better’ educational programme to encourage best recycling practices and in response to the rising levels of recycling bin contamination in Ireland. Repak hopes the programme will change student attitudes and behaviours, transforming participating pupils into enthusiastic recycling ambassadors, influencing their family and friends in turn.

The Pakman Awards recognise outstanding work in recycling, energy and waste management by any business, organisation or community group. Meade Potato awarded the 2016 Pakman Award for its proactive sustainability efforts and efficient channeling of food streams to the appropriate markets. Allied Irish Bank, Aldi, Rehab Glassco, Dun Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council, Panda, SMILE Resource Exchange, University College Cork and Recreate Ireland were also amongst the winners.

Over 100,000 tonnes of contaminated recyclable material goes to landfill each year! In Dublin, on Wednesday 7th September 2016, Repak is in the middle of the 16th annual Repak Recycle Week and is calling on businesses and consumers alike to educate themselves on waste contamination and the significant impact it can have on the environment.

Repak announced a year-end having funded the recovery and recycling of 762,464 tonnes of household and commercial packaging in 2015 at their annual general meeting this morning.

The Pakman Awards, recognises excellence in Waste Management and Recycling for any organisation, business community group or individual in Ireland. Nominations close on midnight, Monday August 31st August.Repak Recycling Week runs from October 19th, with the Pakman Awards being held the evening of October 22nd in the Shelbourne Hotel.

2014 has been a milestone for Repak with recycling rates exceeding all records, new management controls and the introduction of new fee rebates for members whose fees have remained amongst the lowest in Europe.

Repak launches its 14th Repak Recycling Week on October 13th and wants to encourage Irish consumers to get Ireland to number one. Ireland is now 4th in Europe for packaging recycling. Irish businesses have invested €278 million through Repak in ensuring that their packaging does not go to waste.