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Company history
Rehab Recycle was established in 1984 in Cork, primarily to create employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The company has since grown to become an Irish success story and a major force in Ireland's recycling industry, with facilities in Dublin (Ballymount, Ballyfermot and Tallaght), Cork, Galway, Navan and Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Rehab Recycle's combined glass, can, paper, electrical and electronic waste recycling now accounts for in excess of 100,000 tonnes of material each year.
In purely economic terms, Rehab Recycle is just one of many Irish companies to have grown in recent years. Its real achievement, however, is to have assisted workers with disabilities to prove that they have a role to play in the growth of a company and in the creation of wealth in this country. Although operating in an increasingly competitive market, Rehab Recycle's unique integrated employment model provides a supported environment for people with disabilities within the workplace. Assisted by the Government's Wage Subsidy Scheme (WSS), a total of 105 people with disabilities are employed in Rehab Recycle's 180-strong workforce.
Since it was first established, Rehab Recycle has been responsible for every major advance in Ireland's glass recycling sector. The company began with an initial base of just 10 bring sites and only rudimentary equipment that consisted mainly of a crusher and a single second-hand collection vehicle. In its first year of operation, Rehab Recycle processed 300 tonnes of glass cullet. In 2008, the company reaches this figure every day before lunch.
Today, Rehab Recycle is the largest glass recycler in Ireland and is the only glass recycling company that operates nationally. The company currently reprocesses approximately 70 per cent of glass recycling in Ireland, contributing significantly to the achievement of EU targets for recycling of packaging waste.
In co-operation with local authorities and Repak, Rehab Recycle expanded rapidly during the 1990s. In addition to the facility in Cork, the company's first Dublin plant opened in Santry in the early 1990s, and this was followed in 1999 by the establishment of the larger and more modern Ballymount plant. The company underwent its most significant period of growth between 1995 and 2001 when the number of bring sites quadrupled in just six years.
With over 1,800 bring sites nationwide, Rehab Recycle will this year process over 260 million glass bottles and jars. The company not only collects glass deposited by the general public at bring sites nationwide, but also specialises in the collection and recycling of glass from pubs, clubs and other businesses. In recent years, Rehab Recycle and has pioneered collection schemes in restricted access areas such as Cork City, Galway City and Dublin's Temple Bar.
In the early 1990s, the company built on the success of its glass recycling service with an expansion into can, paper and cardboard recycling, as well as a service that ensures the secure destruction of confidential documents and information for a variety of commercial and state organisations, including many Government departments, financial institutions and hospitals.
In 2004, Rehab Recycle opened its first waste electronic and electrical (WEEE) recycling facility in Tallaght, and this service continues to expand. The company offers a full take back service to businesses nationwide that ensures not only WEEE disposal, but also guaranteed data destruction and a complete audit trail. Rehab Recycle recently launched a highly successful new initiative with Microsoft to provide schools and charities with software and recycled/refurbished computer equipment. In addition, agreement was reached with WEEE Ireland for Rehab Recycle to supply every primary school in Ireland with a recycled computer as part of a programme to raise awareness about electrical and electronic waste recycling.
As part of Rehab Recycle's policy of identifying and addressing gaps in the total waste management infrastructure, the company opened Ireland’s largest dedicated facility to recycling Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) in 2007. A simple heat-reduction process removes the air from polystyrene leaving a recyclable plastic that can be used in a variety of products such as clothes hangers, CD cases and stationery.
Rehab Recycle's plans for the future include a consolidation of the company's asset recovery business, which although only recently launched, already boasts computing giant Dell as a customer. Rehab Recycle is increasingly looking to provide a total waste management solution for large and small businesses nationwide. With growing waste charges and a heightened awareness of the need for commercial businesses to be environmentally friendly, it is a business that clearly has huge potential.