Repak National Recycling Week
Date issued: 12th October 2009
Repak's 9th National Recycling Week runs from the 12th to 18th of October and is designed to highlight and encourage householders and businesses to recycle their used packaging. Promotional campaigns such as this and Repak's direct funding of packaging recycling collections over the last 11 years, have helped Ireland grow its packaging recycling to over 713,000 tonnes (diverted away from landfill) in 2008, and increased the packaging recycling rate from under 15% in 1998 to over 64% in 2008.
During Repak Recycling Week from 12th to 18th October you can find great ideas to help you recycle more and recycle better in your home - not just in your kitchen, but in the bathroom, the bedroon and even the living room. Find out more at www.recyclemore.ie.
Repak Recycling Week Tips
Organise household bins
Put three bins in the kitchen; one for recyclables; one for compostable kitchen waste; one for general waste. Organise a dedicated storage space in your back garden or kitchen. Most hardware stores and bargin stores sell a range of special recycling bins, boxes and containers to make recycling easy.
Composting
Place a small compost bin or bucket beside your general waste bin in the kitchen. Purchase a compost bin for your garden from Clare County Council's Civic Amenity Sites and Recycling Centres at Ennis, Shannon, Lisdeen, Scariff and Central Waste Management Facility in Inagh throughout National Recycling Week for a discounted price of only €40. A third of all kitchen waste can be composted and homemade compost is great for your garden.
Be packaging thrifty
Check for products with less packaging and use re-usable plates, cups and bags. Buy vegetables loose. Put leftover food into reusable lunch boxes or containers with lids instead of using non-recyclable aluminium foil or plastic film. A lot of companies have made great strides in reducing the amount of packaging they use in products. For example, did you know the steel in baked bean cans now weighs today only 53% of what it did on the 1970's dinner table (210g versus 113g for the same amount of beans).
Recycle carefully
When using your local bottle bank rinse out bottles, jars and cans. Remove lids but remember you do not need to remove the labels. Separate bottles and jars by colour – green, brown or clear and remember the rule "bottles and jars only". Blue bottles can be placed in the bottle bank for green glass. Don't litter at bring banks. Remember to take home any boxes and bags.
Use re-usable bags
Make sure to use reusable bags when visiting your Recycling Centre or Bring Bank. Often people use cardboard boxes, which can get soggy and unusable. Without realising, unfortunately, some people leave these beside Bring Banks and at Recycling Centres – this is littering and makes everyone's job harder.
Morning after parties
Gather up all glass bottles and aluminium cans in separate bags or bins after your parties and visit you local bottle bank. Glass bottles can be manufactured into new glass bottles and jars and can also be used in road beds, concrete, fibreglass, ceramic tiles, picture frames and costume jewellery.
Recycle used batteries
Collect up all the used batteries. Consider purchasing a battery re-charger and rechargeable batteries for battery operated toys and gadgets. Bring your waste batteries back to your local shop that sells batteries of a similar type. The old batteries are then recycled for free!
Remember all the items that can be recycled from your kitchen
- Baby food jars
- Wine bottles
- Jam jars
- Sauce jars
- Cereal boxes
- Tissue boxes
- Kitchen paper cores
- Milk Cartons
- Juice Cartons
- Multipack sleeves
- Ready meals cardboard sleeves
- Washing up powder boxes
- Washing up liquid bottles
- Fabric softener bottles
- Sauce bottles
- Water bottles
- Plastic milk bottles
Please ensure all food containers are fully rinsed.
Remember all the items that can be recycled from your sitting room
- Newspapers
- Magazines
- Tissue boxes
- Beer bottles or cans
- Chocolate and sweet boxes
Please ensure all food containers are fully rinsed.
Remember all the items that you can recycle from the bathroom
- Shampoo/conditioner bottles
- Talc bottles
- Shower gel bottles
- Toilet roll cores
- Tissue boxes
- Toiletry outer sleeves and boxes such as those from razors and soap
- Hand soap bottles
Please ensure all toiletry containers are fully rinsed.
Remember all the items that you can recycle from the bedroom
- Books
- Magazines
- Tissue boxes
- Wall posters
- Perfume boxes and packaging
- Packaging from clothes
- Clothes shopping bags made from paper.
Remember all the things that you can recycle from the utility room
- Washing detergent boxes
- Fabric conditioner bottles
- Pet food cans
Please ensure all utility containers are fully rinsed.
Why recycle – five good reasons
- Recycling conserves our valuable natural resources
- Recycling saves energy
- Recycling saves clean air and clean water
- Recycling saves landfill space
- Recycling can save money and create jobs
Recycling glass
Glass accounts for 7.5% of household waste. Old glass is easily made into new glass jars and bottles or into other glass products like fibreglass insulation. And unlike paper, glass jars and bottles can be recycled over and over again. The glass doesn't wear out.
Recycling 1 glass jar saves enough energy to light a light bulb for nearly 1 hour or run a TV for 15 minutes. Glass cullet (ie. recycled glass) can be used to make new glass, concrete, fibreglass, ceramic tiles, picture frames and can be used in roadbeds. Using recycled glass uses 40 % less energy than making products from all new materials. In Ireland almost 80% of all glass packaging is recycled.
Glass recycling
Preparing your used glass containers for recycling is easy. All you need to do is remove their lids or caps and rinse the containers in water. You don't need to scrub off the labels, since they will burn up when the glass is melted down for recycling. Most recyclers ask you to sort glass containers by colour—clear, green, or amber (golden brown). Once glass has been coloured, the colour cannot be removed. That means a maker of clear glass jars cannot use coloured cullet. Why do some manufacturers package their foods and beverages in green or amber coloured glass containers? The coloured glass protects some sensitive foods and beverages from degrading in light.
Recycle your aluminium cans
Aluminium is made from Bauxite Ore which is a non-renewable resource Recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy used to produce aluminium from raw materials Over 390 million aluminium beverage cans are sold in Ireland each year, all of which are fully recyclable.
Recycle aluminium cans
You can differentiate between steel and aluminium cans by using a magnet. Aluminium cans are not magnetic; therefore they will not stick to the magnet. Steel cans will stick to the magnet. Used aluminium cans are recycled and returned to a store shelf as a new can in as few as 60 days. That means a consumer could purchase basically the same recycled aluminium can from a retailer's shelf nearly every 9 weeks or 6 times a year.
It takes 670 Aluminium cans to make up one bicycle. Every minute of everyday, an average of 105,800 aluminium cans are recycled. Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours. Every 3 seconds a baby is born. In that time, 140 cans were born. Aluminium accounts for 1.2% of the household bin Aluminium never wears out, it can be recycled forever.
Recycle paper and cardboard
Paper products make up 23% of the household bin. Making recycled paper instead of new paper saves trees, and uses 54% less energy and 58% less water than making paper from virgin wood pulp. Each tonne of paper recycled can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4,000 kilowatts of energy and 7,000 gallons of water. Paper products use up at least 35% of the world's annual commercial wood harvest. For an office which contains 1000 people, each person uses approximately 10,000 sheets of paper per year. That is enough paper to stretch nearly 2,000 miles (from here to southern Italy); That is a pile of paper 500 metres high (nearly as high as five times the Dublin Spire); One piece of office grade paper can be recycled seven times. Did you know that drinks cartons are made into book covers? During World War II when raw materials were scarce, 33% of all paper was recycled. After the war, this number decreased sharply.
Recycle plastic bottles
Plastic accounts for 12.4% of the household bin. Plastic is made from crude oil – a valuable and limited non-renewable resource Recycling plastic saves 2/3 of the energy required when producing plastic from raw materials. Every plastic bag we throw away stays buried in the ground for up to 500 years before it finally breaks down. It takes about 27 recycled soft drink bottles to make one fleece jacket. 150 Plastic bottles make up one mat.
Clare County Council helping you to recycle more this Repak National Recycling Week.