The build up to this year's Repak Recycling Week started today. Repak has teamed up with Peter Donnegan to build a 'glass house effect' garden, which is on display in Dunnes Stores in Georges Street. Why not pop down to check it out, or view our photos here.

Repak Recycling Week kicks off this Monday 12th. The theme is Recycle More and Recycle Better. Repak are targeting 18,000 tonnes of used packaging or 1.6 million green bin collections over the month of October. For more check out our new website www.recyclemore.ie

Easter is a great time to celebrate and at Repak we have had a look at how much we celebrated this year. Over the course of the Easter celebrations we will.

• Munch through almost 1,000 tonnes of Chocolate at Easter.
• Use enough Aluminium foil to make 1.3 million drinks cans
• Spend €34 million this year on 6.8 million Easter Eggs.


we have estimated that house parties on Good Friday and celebrations over the Easter period will result in over 42 million beverage cans and 9 million bottles of wine and 35 million plastic drink bottles being consumed. This is equivalent to over of 61 million litres of alcohol and soft drinks or almost 10% of the daily water usage of Dublin City.

In chocolate terms we munch through over €34 million worth of Easter Eggs and 1,000 tonnes of chocolate. This is the equivalent of almost 5.5 billion calories that would take almost 2 million marathons to burn off.

An extra 42,000 tonnes of used packaging from cards, beverage and total packaging materials is expected over the Easter period. Easter Egg packaging alone equates to 655 tonnes of used packaging or less than 2% of all packaging consumed: Easter egg packaging equates to:

 18,000 kilos of aluminium foil packaging waste equal to which equivalent to just over 1.3 million regular drinks cans (330ml).
 395,000 kilos of card or paper packaging waste which is the equivalent of what 6,715 trees would produce.
 242,000 kilos of PET plastic packaging waste or enough to make 400,000 fleece jackets.

This year much has been done to reduce the amount of packaging on items like Easter Eggs with manufacturers reducing the amount of packaging up to 25% across the board and some introducing packaging free ‘eco eggs’.

Last year we recycled 16,500 tonnes or approximately 40%+ of all household used packaging. This year we are targeting to collect nearly 19,000 tonnes or about 12 kilos per household which is approximately 45% of all packaging. This would result in the equivalent of 23,000 tonnes of carbon saved or the same as removing 12,500 cars from the road. This year Easter Egg manufacturers Cadburys, Mars and Nestle have reduced their packaging by on average 25-30% and increased the recyclability of packaging, as well as using recycled material in their packaging, added extra information on recycling and reduced the amount of packaging used. We are now asking everyone to help us over the final hurdle and recycle as much of the packaging as possible through their recycling bins, bring banks and by visiting their recycling centres.

You can get details on wwww.repak.ie for wherer you can recycle your Easter packaging.

or those of our interesed in seeing the changes and reduction in packaging that the manufacturers have made here are some examples:

Cadburys
Cadburys has achieved a 25% savings on Easter Egg packaging. These reductions also mean that extra eggs can now fit onto a pallets resulting in additional transport savings for the environment. Now an extra 210 medium and 120 large eggs can be placed on a pallet. These savings equates to 730 tonnes of packaging for Ireland and the UK. Broken down by material this equates to (2009 vs 200 :
a. Plastic Medium eggs 31% Large eggs 50%
b. Cardboard Medium egg 26% Large eggs 29%


Mars
In 2008:
• Mars moved 83% of Easter egg cartons to 100% recycled cardboard.
• No PVC has been used in its Easter egg packaging, which is not readily recyclable. Instead the company uses PET thermoforms (sames as plastic bottles) which are recyclable, which means its Easter egg packaging is overall 100% recyclable.
• PET inserts further reduced thickness by 10%.

In 2009:
• Mars have reduced medium egg carton weight by 42% (vs target of 25%).
• Mars have reduced their plastic insert weight on medium eggs by 35%.
• The company has added communication on our packs about how to recycle our packs.
• Achieved a 30% inc

We have teamed up with An Taisce and the Green Schools to launch a Schools Carbon Calculator. The Green Schools programme has achieved a huge amount to date including:

•346 new schools achieve their Green Flag status over the last year.
•Contributes to savings of over €2 million for participating schools and saves over 200 million litres of water.
•420 new registrations during the last school year bringing the total number of schools participating to 3,109.

Putting the achievements in to perscpective it means that Green-Schools throughout the country have also helped save enough water to fill 85 Olympic sized swimming pools, enough petrol to power a car for 5 million kilometres, enough energy to power a light bulb for 1.4 million days and enough waste to fill over 1,000 bin trucks.

Your school can now achieve more by trying out the Repak Green-Schools Carbon Calculator (http://www.greenschoolsireland.org).

The free online tool helps your school calculate and reduce its carbon footprint and was developed as part of Repak’s €1 million sponsorship of the Green-Schools programme. The web based programme allows you to easily input your recycling and waste data along with water and energy consumption to produce an overall carbon footprint report. The report details the schools and your individual footprint and also shows how it compares against the national average figure. It also gives detailed breakdowns for the carbon footprint for each of the different areas (waste, energy, water).

There are now a total of 3,109 schools participating representing 645,000 students and 44,000 teachers.

It is estimated that the Green-Schools programme for the current school year has helped save:
• 7,700 tonnes of carbon emissions.
• €2 million in direct costs.
• 3.5 million units of electricity.
• 200 million litres of water.
• 2,100 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill.

Why not give it a try!