Pesticide and biopesticide containers play an essential role in ensuring that crop protection products are delivered safely to the end user. Conscious of our collective responsibility to reduce plastic waste, our industry has long been engaged in ensuring that these containers are recovered and recycled.
As part of our 2030 commitments, we are committed to ensuring that a Container Management System (CMS) is available in every EU Member State by 2025 and that there is a 75% average collection rate of containers within the EU.
In 2021, Ireland became the 20th EU Member State to benefit from a Container Management System.
Without a dedicated container scheme, the Animal and Plant Health Association (APHA) of Ireland recorded an average container collection rate of 36% for the three years 2017 – 2019.
Working together with Farm Plastics, APHA developed a targeted text campaign to encourage farmers to use the newly-established container management scheme, which includes a facility to recycle used triple-rinsed pesticide containers.
John Keogh, CEO of APHA, commented, “This campaign has been very successful, increasing recycling rates to a projected 55% in 2022. We are pleased with the progress achieved to date. Fifty five percent is an important milestone, achieving the target set by the EU for plastic recycling by 2030, but remains below our industry commitment of 75% by 2025. Much work remains to be done in Ireland, but we are confident that we will achieve the target. The evolving partnership with Farm Plastics will be central to our achievement of our industry commitment if not by 2025, very soon afterwards.”
The APHA represents manufacturers and distributors of plant protection products (PPP’s) and Veterinary Medicines. Packaging regulations require our members to join and pay fees to REPAK, a not-for-profit company owned by its members, which facilitates the collection of all packaging for recycling. For PPP containers, REPAK supports Farm Plastics Ltd, in collecting triple-rinsed containers for recycling in dedicated streams to produce signposting and drainage piping.