Waste Management Services

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

To remove large items of cardboard e.g. Boxes etc. log a call with the Buildings and Estates help desk under the portering request category.

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 & Estates Helpdesk 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 log a call under "Cleaning Request"  with the Buildings & Estates Helpdesk.

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.

Small Electrical Items

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

To remove these log a call with the Buildings & Estates Helpdesk 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 & Estates Helpdesk 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 Buildings & Estates Helpdesk 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.

For requests to dispose of larger glass items, please contact buildingsmaintenance@ul.ie.

Departments can log a call with the Buildings and Estates help desk under the portering request category and they will collect toners and ink cartridges.

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) 

Information regarded the University contracted Confidential Shredding supplier, and available services can be found here: Professional and Managed Services | University of Limerick (ul.ie)

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 under the portering category and a member of our 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.

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
• Plastic Wrappers

What can’t go in your office bin?

• Food
• Chewing gum
• Compostable Containers
• Standard coffee cups
• Liquids
• Glass/ sharp items

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.

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, and in compliance with existing internal and industry rules and regulations. 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.

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.

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. 

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. 

The Buildings and Estates Department manage the removal of waste from the campus through contracts with approved licensees. All contracts ensure the removal of various waste is conducted in compliance with existing rules and regulations governing waste management.

The disposal of WEEE is licensed in accordance with the European Union (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Regulations 2014. Requests to dispose of WEEE can be directed to buildingsmaintenance@ul.ie. However, depending on the size/weight of an individual item or the volume of multiple items of WEEE, 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.