Packaging comes with the porducts we buy for our homes. Ireland produced 1.2 million tonnes of packaging waste in 2021, and is growing at a rate of 5% per year. Packaging waste mainly comprises of cardboard, paper, plastic, and metal. Each year, 99% of packaging placed on the market is single use packaging.
While it is important to ensure proper recycling of all packaging waste, it is even more important to reduce the amount of packagning waste that is generated. For every 10kg of resuable packaging used, it saves 93kg of single use packaging. To curb the growth of packaging waste and reduce the amount generated each year, the government can introduce a tax on items purchased that use single use packaging. The greater the tax, the less single use packaging that will be bought and in turn find its way in household bins. However, the higher the government raise the prices of everyday products, their popularity among the public will suffer.