RRW 2007 Day 2 - Glass

Ireland’s Glass Recycling Record Smashed

- Bottle and Jar Deposits Enough to Fill the Croke Park Pitch 58 Feet High

A record 65,000 tonnes of glass from Irish households has been recycled by Rehab Recycle in the last year – that’s enough bottles and jars to fill the pitch at Ireland’s largest sporting stadium, Croke Park, to a height of 58 feet, or if the bottles were placed end to end, to circle the entire globe over one and a half times.

A new survey by Rehab Recycle reveals that 211 million individual glass containers – enough glass bottles to stretch approximately 64,000 kilometres were collected in Rehab Recycle bottle banks around the country in the last 12 months.

In the past three years, glass deposits at Rehab Recycle bring sites have increased by a staggering 30 per cent.

Compiled as part of Repak’s Recycling Week, the study also shows that the people of Cork are once again the country’s best recyclers with deposits of some 61 bottles and jars for every man woman and child in the county during the first eight months of the year. Galway and Leitrim were the next best counties with an average of 57 and 53 items of glass recycled per person respectively.

The largest increase in glass recycling came in County Mayo, up by 30 per cent to 1,473 tonnes of glass, followed by Kilkenny where figures rose by 26 per compared to the same period last year. The bring bank at Superquinn Shopping Centre in Lucan, Dublin claimed the honour of being Ireland’s busiest bring site with deposits of nearly one million (969,000) bottles and jars recorded during the period from January to August 2007.

“In the past six years, deposits at Rehab Recycle’s bring centres nationwide have more than doubled from 30,000 tonnes of waste glass to 65,000 tonnes last year. These returns represent an extraordinary effort by Irish people to recycle,” said Rehab Recycle general manager, Bob Rowat.

Speaking at the launch of Repak Recycling Week, Mr. Andrew Hetherington, CEO, Repak, said: “Whilst Ireland now has a very impressive recycling rate for glass at nearly 80 per cent, there are many other materials that households need to concentrate on and we hope to highlight these materials by dedicating each day of recycling week to one specific packaging material. In particular, we need to focus on the smaller more valuable packaging types like plastic and aluminum where recycling rates are lower at 24 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.”

Rehab Recycle
Rehab Recycle’s combined glass, can, paper and waste electrical recycling facilities account for in excess of 90,000 tonnes of material each year, including some 211 million bottles and jars. The company, which has over 1,800 bring centres nationwide, is part of a unique integrated employment model and has a workforce of 162 people, 104 of whom are people with disabilities. Visit http://www.gandonenterprises.ie/ for more information.