The University of Limerick Buildings and Estates Department is responsible for the collection and disposal of waste generated in various locations across campus. The University's waste management strategy aims to reduce as far as possible the amount of general waste removed from campus. 

Learn more about the various waste disposal methods

Offices

Small items of cardboard can be disposed of in your blue office recycling bin.

To remove large items of cardboard e.g. Boxes etc. simply leave them outside your office door and a member of our cleaning team will remove it that evening. 

When moving office, you may need to dispose of a large quantity of items.

To request a wheelie bin to be brought to your office simply log a call with the Buildings and Estates help desk here under the portering request category.

Please note in your request if you need a general waste bin, a recycling bin or both. To dispose of any other items such as furniture or WEEE waste please read the relevant tabs on this website.

To remove batteries from your office, simply log a call with buildingsmaintenance@ul.ie

One of our team will call up to your office and give you a blue battery collection box. The filled box will be collected by our team the next day and emptied into our main central campus battery bin.

In general standard coffee cups are not recyclable. Therefore, coffee cups should not be placed in your blue office recycling bin. To dispose of a coffee cup appropriately please put it in the red general waste bin on the corridor nearby. 

However, some cafes on campus provide cup alternatives such as; compostable cups. Again, this cup should not be disposed of in your office bin but can be disposed of in a brown composting bin in a café or restaurant, or alternatively a red general waste bin.

Some locations on campus offer a 2GoCup: You put down a €1 deposit along with the price of your drink. Each time you bring the cup back you exchange your used cup for a new one with no extra cost, meaning there is no coffee cups wasted.

The removal of UL Build computers needs to be done in accordance with the ITD guidelines. Please view these here.

Small Electrical Items

Small electrical items relate to small items with plugs and wires etc.

To remove these log a call with the Buildings and Estates help desk here under the portering section and your building porter will drop by and remove them for you.

The porter will bring the items back to their office where they are stored in a small WEEE bin. This bin is collected on a weekly basis by the ground teams and transferred to our main campus WEEE skip.

 

Medium Electrical Items

Medium electrical items relate to monitors, speakers, etc.

To remove such items simply log a call with the Buildings and Estates help desk here under the portering request category and you will be contacted with the details of when a cage will be dropped outside your building. When full, the cage will be removed and the contents disposed of into the main campus WEEE skip.

 

Large Electrical Items e.g. Dept. Photocopier

B&E recommend that you contact the supplier of the large electrical item (e.g. Dept. Photocopier) to request that they remove/ dispose of the unit.

 

Should you wish to dispose of items of furniture (desks, chairs, pedestal units, filing cabinets) from your office simply log a call with the Building and Estates help desk here under the portering request category. Please dispose of fixed assets in accordance with the fixed asset policy available to view here

To dispose of glass items please drop them in either of the following campus bottle bank locations:

  1. Main Building, Adjacent to Block E Murphy Tower (Tower 12) 
  2. Main Building, Adjacent to Block B McLaughlin Tower (Tower 5)

Locations of the designated bins.

Departments can contact buildingsmaintenance@ul.ie for details on an external contractor who will collect toners and ink cartridges free of charge.

University departments must make their own arrangements for shredding confidential papers to safeguard the security of confidential information.  See related UL Policy on Records Management available at Policy Hub | University of Limerick (ul.ie) 

The options for confidential paper shredding is as follows:

  1. Medium risk: Departments have the option of hiring paper shredding companies to come on site and provide confidential certified paper shredding services. Contact DGD directly to arrange pick-up, shredding, and invoicing. In this option, fill the paper into a bin bag and DGD would come to site and collect it from you directly. They would bring it back to their centre and shred the paper under camera.
  2. High risk: Departments have the option of hiring paper shredding companies to come on site and provide confidential certified paper shredding services. Contact DGD directly to arrange pick-up, shredding, and invoicing. In this option, Fill the bin bags as above and DGD come to site and shred on the spot using a large shredder in their truck.

The contact details for DGD are as follows:

DGD - DGD Papers Limited, Bay M1, Raheen Business Park, Limerick. Tel: 061 491 333

Paper/magazines can be recycled in your office bin. If you have a large quantity of paper that is greater than that which will fit in this bin, you can log a call with the Buildings and Estates help desk here under the cleaning category and a member of our cleaning team will drop a large green recycling bag at your office.

The filled bag can be left outside your office on the corridor at the end of the day and will be collected by the campus cleaners.

Your small blue office bin is designated for recycling only. General waste, compostables, liquids, etc is not permitted as the bins are only emptied twice weekly during office cleans.  

To appropriately dispose of general waste and compostable items, you can find general waste (red) bins situated on the corridor nearby your office, and composting bins (brown) available in nearby restaurants.

What can go in your office bin:

  • Paper
  • Cardboard
  • Newspaper and magazines
  • Empty plastic water bottles

What can’t go in your office bin?

  • No plastic wrappers
  • Food
  • Chewing gum
  • Compostable Containers
  • Standard coffee cups
  • Liquids
  • Glass/ sharp items

Restaurants

The UL Green Campus team with UL Buildings & Estates and UL Environmental Society recently rolled out a consistent red & green colour scheme on all public corridors bins across campus, with Brown bins available in the restaurant outlets. Existing bins were upcycled for this project. The breakdown of the colours is as follows:

  • Green bin = recycling - found on most corridors across campus 
  • Red bin = general waste - found on all corridors across campus 
  • Brown bin = composting - found in restaurant areas around campus.

Visual Representation of the Waste Collection System

Some catering locations on campus offer a 2GoCup: You put down a €1 deposit along with the price of your drink. Each time you bring the cup back you exchange your used cup for a new one with no extra cost.  Thereby reducing the need to dispose of "takeaway" cups.

Labs

Each laboratory is responsible for the appropriate disposal of all waste. While B&E assists with the removal of General Waste, Recycling and metal waste, all chemical waste, sharps, Glass, etc is the responsibility of the lab users to remove it appropriately. Contact your local Chief Technical Officer to learn more. 

B&E recommend that you contact the supplier of the machine to request that they remove/dispose of the unit.

COVID-19 Update: All waste that has been in contact with the individual, including used tissues, and masks if used, should be put in a normal waste bag. Double bagging should be used. The waste bag should be kept for 72 hours, then thrown into the normal waste https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/coronavirus-SARS-CoV-2-guidance-environmental-cleaning-non-healthcare-facilities.pdf

To remove metal waste simply log it in the maintenance tab of the B&E helpdesk 

To arrange the removal of timber waste simply  log a call in the maintenance tab of the B&E helpdesk 

To remove large cardboard and other recycling packaging simply log a call in the portering tab of the B&E helpdesk and a 700L recycling bin will be delivered to your area.

To remove large items of general waste from your lab, simply log a call in the portering tab of the B&E helpdesk to have a 700L bin brought to your area.

Campus

The UL Green Campus team with UL Buildings & Estates and UL Environmental Society recently rolled out a consistent red & green colour scheme on all public corridors bins across campus, with Brown bins available in the restaurant outlets. Existing bins were upcycled for this project. The breakdown of the colours is as follows:

  • Green bin = recycling - found on most corridors across campus 
  • Red bin = general waste - found on all corridors across campus 
  • Brown bin = composting - found in restaurant areas around campus.

Visual Representation of the Waste Collection System

The University encourages that pallets should be taken away by the delivery provider where possible. If this is not possible pallet removal can be arranged with the B&E Grounds Team simply logging a call in the maintenance tab of the B&E helpdesk 

See locations of the various bins around campus

The Buildings and Estates grounds team look after the provision of bins for events and their associated waste streams.

All buildings on campus have an associated waste compound. This is where the general waste and recycling from that building is brought to at the end of each day. Access to these compounds is restricted to buildings estates staff and building catering staff where appropriate. 

Further Information on Waste Disposal

The An Taisce Environmental Unit coordinates a national Green Flag programme which accredits colleges for work done in various sustainability themes. The University of Limerick were accredited with their first Green Flag in Autumn 2015, with a successful re-accreditation in November 2018. This accreditation is a result of the hard work and collaboration of the UL Green Campus Committee, Environmental Society, Environmental Committee, Buildings and Estates team and various staff and students across campus. 

The University of Limerick currently holds Green Flag accreditations for Waste, Green ICT, Biodiversity, Travel and Transport, Energy and Student Engagement. 

The UL Environmental Society is a national award-winning student lead group who tackles various aspects of sustainability and climate change. The society has coordinated various projects in relation to waste, the most notable being their The Plastic Bottle Collector project. This project aimed to highlight the huge quantities of plastic waste being disposed of on campus on a daily rate. As a result of this campaign, the University committed to spending 50,000 to installing 13 new Water Bottle Refill Stations across campus. The Society won a national BICS award for this project.

The society has run an annual Sustainable Fashion show which saw students modelling second-hand clothes. This event highlights the issue of fast fashion that is prominent at the moment. Clothes were offered for sale afterward to all attendees.

Another notable waste-related campaign that society runs is the UL Happy Market. This Market is run towards the end of each semester to facilitate outgoing students of the campus the option of being able to place items up for sale which incoming students might want to buy, so the items avoid being thrown out. 

General Waste is collected by the UL's waste removal provider, Mr Binman. This waste is brought to their general waste facility at the Dock Road, Limerick City.

At this facility, the General Waste is compacted and baled. The baled general waste is then collected on a boat at the Limerick Dock and shipped to Scandanavia where it is burned at an Energy Recovery facility. 

The University's waste management strategy aims to reduce as far as possible the amount of General Waste being removed off-site through waste segregation. 

Compostable items such as good waste and compostable cups are collected in the restaurant areas on campus. This waste is collected from campus by our waste removal provider, Mr Binman, and brought to their composting facility. Here, their compostable waste is left to decompose, and after a few months, the waste is ready to be upcycled into composting pellets for planting. 

One of the notable composting facilities on campus is the food macerators located at Red Raisins. This macerator takes huge quantities of food and extracts the moisture from it, reducing down the actual final waste by approx 85% 

Metals are delivered to nearby metal scrap yards where they are repurposed and recycled for reuse. 

Recycled waste is removed from campus by our waste removal provider, Mr. Binman. This waste is brought to their Recycling Sorting Station in Tralee, where all of the different materials are separated and grouped.

The various grouped materials are then collected and delivered to the UK where they will be recycled. 

The disposal of WEEE is licensed in accordance with the Waste Management (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Regulations of 2005 and the subsequent Amendment 2008. Requests to dispose of WEEE should be directed in the first instance to buildingsmaintenance@ul.ie   Generally, most WEEE would be removed by the Buildings Office team to a holding area whereupon it is collected once a month by our Waste Management service provider and disposed of in accordance with the aforementioned legislation. However, depending on the size/weight of an individual item or the volume of multiple items of WEEE concerned arrangements may differ.  In the event that the Building and Estates Department anticipate difficulties or unnecessary expenditure removing WEEE to the holding area, a separate once-off collection from the source may be arranged with a waste management contractor and as a result, the unit disposing of the equipment may incur the cost of this work. Please do not leave WEEE on corridors, other communal spaces, or the campus grounds.

UL is committed to the reduction of plastic waste being generated on campus. New Water Refill Stations have been installed in a number of locations across campus. Consult the map illustrating the location of all of these water refill stations.