Council promotes a greener season for this Christmas

Rachel Farrell

SOUTH Dublin County Council is encouraging locals to enjoy Christmas this year with minimal waste.

The council is offering a Christmas tree recycling service in a bid to promote the idea of a green season.

The service is free of charge for household trees, with an allocation of one Christmas tree per family.

Various locations are based in Lucan, Palmerstown, Clondalkin, Tallaght, Greenhills, Old Bawn, Firhouse, Rathfarnham and Saggart.

Recycling begins on Wednesday, January 3 and finishes on Friday 12.

The council is also promoting waste prevention of food and packaging this Christmas. 

A recent study by national recycling agency Repak shows that Ireland is expected to produce almost 83,000 tonnes of waste this Christmas – nearly the same amount produced by Limerick and Galway combined in one year.

In a survey of 1,017 people, 70 per cent said they intend to recycle this Christmas.

A third of those surveyed said their recycling bin is usually full before Christmas day. A total of 91 per centsaid they would be happy to recieve gifts with less packaging. 

The CEO of Repak, Séamus Clancy, said they are calling on the Irish public to shop with Repak members this Christmas.

“This environmentally conscientious behaviour will be a further driving force in improving the nation’s recycling habits,” he said.

Aldi, Lidl, Tesco and Musgraves are just some of the supermarkets affiliated with Repak.

“This year, Repak celebrates 20 years of packaging recycling success,” Mr Clancy added.

“In this time Ireland has come from being one of the poorest performers for packaging recycling in Europe to being ranked one of the highest.” 

According to the council, the average household generates over 124kg of packaging over the festive season.

To prevent this, they suggest recycling festive packaging at various banks.” around the county.

They also suggest cutting back on food waste by limiting the amount of perishable foods used, as food waste disposal reaches a peak over Christmas.