A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research due to be released in October finds that Ireland was the heaviest producer of municipal waste per capita in 2004 producing more than any of the other 14 member states making up the EU.
Ireland produced 869 kg per person of municipal waste in 2004 which compares to 574kg per person produced in the UK in 2003-04.
There is a difficulty in comparing municipal waste statistics as, even within the UK, there are vastly differing quantities of trade waste collected by Authorities. These discrepancies are likely to be magnified even more by inter-nation comparisons.
A better guide would have been a household waste comparison, though even here there may have been problems of comparing like with like.
Recycling performance
However 869kg is undoubtedly a high figure, though the associated recycling performance of 
31% is described as middle of the European table and compares very favourably with the 19% (17.7% for household only) for the UK. Ireland does not yet have a waste incinerator meaning that the majority of waste goes to landfill.
The research follows a European Environment Agency (EEA) report last year which itself identified Ireland as the largest municipal waste producer per capita.