We’re looking at 10 ways to reduce our carbon footprint, based on a recent visit to a Dublin recycling centre
Sustainability is incredibly important to us at IMAGE HQ. As a company, and individually, we care deeply for the environment we live in. We’ve already swapped disposable coffee cups for reusable Keep Cups, we have dedicated recycling zones in the office, and we often choose swap shops over fast fashion.
But with plastic pollution worse than ever, we want to take our commitment to sustainability to the next step. Enter Repak’s ‘Team Green’ initiative.
Repak is calling on everyone to play their part when it comes to plastic recycling. If everyone in Ireland recycled just one more piece of plastic every week, we could recycle 250 million more pieces of plastic every year.
Not only that, a recent review by Panda shows that, on average, 4% of the waste in people’s black bins is perfectly recyclable, including plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays. If every one of Panda’s 250,000 household customers put all of their clean bottles, pots, tubs and trays in the recycling bin, they would recycle more than 6,000 extra tonnes of plastic each year – the equivalent of 120 million two-litre drinks bottles.
While that sounds good to us, there’s still some confusion about what can be recycled and what can’t. For that reason, we visited the Panda recycling centre in Ballymount to learn more.
Guided by the Repak team and Panda’s Liam Dunne, we donned a hard hat and hi-vis vest to explore one of Ireland’s top recycling centres. To say the experience was eye-opening would be an understatement.
A few things struck us on arrival. One, the deafening roar of top-of-the-range machinery. Two, the high number of staff (110) manually handling what the machines might miss, and three, the shocking amount of non-recyclable material being put in people’s recycling bins.
The amount of non-recyclable plastic being delivered to the centre was jaw-dropping. Of the approximately 350 tonnes processed here per day, 36% is sent back out as non-recyclable waste.
While 350 tonnes sounds like a lot (and it is), the centre can process as much as 900 tonnes of recycling at Christmas time. The sheer volume of packaging is a sight to behold.
For more information about how to recycle, visit repak.ie/for-home.
Photo: Grace McGettigan; photo taken by Liam Dunne
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