Register for free and continue reading
Join our growing army of changemakers and get unlimited access to our premium content
Consumers now recycle more than half of all household waste, the body funded by the packaging industry revealed.
Over 600,000 tonnes of packaging was recycled, enough to fill the new Chinese Olympic stadium.
The biggest growth in recycling rates was seen in wood, which Irish consumers recycled 12.6% more in 2007 than the year before.
According to the Independent, the 125,000 tonnes of wood which was recycled would be sufficient to build a gymnastics beam from Dublin to Beijing.
A 3% increase in paper and cardboard recycling took the total material recycled to 286,000 tonnes, or enough to produce 3.7bn cereal boxes.
“It is great to see a continuing increase in the rate of recycling and it shows that households around the country are making a considerable effort to recycle more,” Repak CEO Andrew Hetherington said.
“However, we need people to recycle more used packaging as well as working to reduce the amount of packaging on the market.”
EU regulations dictate that countries recycle 60% of all packaging waste by 2011.
Please login or Register to leave a comment.