Vol. 561 No. 3
178 Mr. Gilmore asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government the facilities which exist here for the physical recycling of glass; the location for recycling glass which is collected here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4358/03]
My Department does not have any direct function, or compile systematic information, in this matter. Its primary role in the area of recycling is to develop and put in place the necessary policy and legislative framework to facilitate a sustained expansion in national recycling performance across all waste streams.
Subject to this position, some current facilities and uses in Ireland in relation to glass recycling as known to my Department are as follows: Rehab Recycling Partnership operates a glass cullet production plant in Ballymount, County Dublin, where most container glass, bottles and jars, collected for recycling in Ireland is pre-processed into crushed cullet. There are also a few smaller glass crushing plants in operation around the country. Following the closure of the Irish Glass Bottle plant in Ringsend last year most crushed and uncrushed cullet processed in Ireland is now transported to a facility in Northern Ireland for use in the manufacture of new glass containers, a small volume of which is transported to glass reprocessors in Britain.
Glass cullet is also being increasingly recycled in road construction projects as bituminous road base aggregate. Such cullet is generally either surplus green cullet, for which it is difficult to obtain markets in Ireland, or cullet reject, that is colour contaminated or contaminated with ceramics.
