During late October and early November 2020 Recycle IT implemented a Mattress Recovery Initiative which lead to safe recycling of over 1000 mattresses.

About Mattress Recycling

Once planned this initiative was offered over a 4 week period in partnership with South Dublin County Council. Recycle IT used recycling experience, existing contacts alongside additional resources to offer this recycling opportunity to residents across South Dublin.

As you are aware, mattresses are manufactured from a range of materials, including wood, metal, fabric and plastic, all of which can be recycled once they are separated. it is reported recovery rate can reach 95% for recyclable bed materials.

Mattress recycling operators such as Eco Mattress in Dublin 11 take mattresses apart by hand. As they are being dismantled, materials are sorted and segregated. Some materials are baled for storage and transported for further refinement and reuse.

Materials recovered include metal springs, wood, fabrics including cotton felts, foam and a variety of plastic. Wood can be reduced to chips and steel sent to steel recyclers. This is all worthwhile and keep mattresses out of landfill.

Today material recovered can be:

• Reused in new mattresses,
• Reused in other products, particularly upholstery,
• Recycled for use in new and unrelated products, or
• Processed for incineration with energy recovery.

What was Achieved

Recycle IT offered 22 event days across South County Dublin and recovered approximately 50 mattresses per day resulting in a total of 1065 mattress recovered and recycled safety. Recycle IT created 3 additional employment opportunities over a 4 week period and allow people in homes to declutter easily with recycling events offered Monday – Saturday over a number of weeks.

Recycle IT also hosted a number of combined recycling days where both electrical equipment and mattresses were collected for recycling using different teams and vehicles. These events were also supported by volunteering which is core to community engagement.

Once received mattress were transported to Eco Mattress where they were broken down into component parts for reuse or safe disposal.

We want to thanks South Dublin County Council for their support and residents for coming out and recycling safely. The initiative is now over for 2020 but may take place again in 2021. If so, we will let you know in advance.

WEEE Recycling

At present Recycle IT are working to recycle waste electrical and electronic equipment alongside pure metal equipment from homes and organisations in Dublin. If you need a cost effective collection please call 01 4578321 or email us! Remember it’s free to drop off household and small office items to Recycle IT. You will find directions here.

Starts November 21st 

With Christmas approaching, we are reminding people to repurpose, reuse, repair and recycle in order to reduce waste and save resources before and during the festive season!

The European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR) encourages all Europeans to practice and carry out awareness-raising actions about sustaining resources and managing waste during a single week in November and after!

European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR) runs from November 21st until November 29th 2020. The focus of the week is on reducing invisible waste created in all EU States including Ireland.

Invisible waste” refers to the large amount of waste generated during the manufacturing process for products. Did you know to manufacture a smartphone weighing less than 200 grams and create its beautiful packaging generates an unbelievable 86 kilograms of waste – about as heavy as a large Kangaroo! (Click 86 KG to watch the video)

This year, the EWWR challenges you to get informed and raise awareness on the huge amount of waste that we all unconsciously generate. You can encourage a range of audiences including family, friends, elected councillors, local business, and your community to do more at a local level to reduce waste.

• Some objectives for you might be:
  • to raise awareness about waste reduction, product reuse and material recycling at home, in school or work
  • to decide on actions to reduce waste – e.g. reduce packaging from shopping.
  • communicate actions with others in your network
  • try to communicate in a way which leads to simple behaviour changes regarding buying and waste creation.

If you wish you can take part of the EWWR in three different ways:

1. Action developer: this is for public authorities, associations, NGOs, businesses, educational establishments, another bodies or individual citizens interested in carrying out an awareness-raising action on waste reduction, reuse or recycling during next EWWR
2. Participants: this is for an individual or a group wanting to participate in an action taking place during the EWWR
3. EWWR Coordinator: this is for a public authority competent in the field of waste prevention, interested in coordinating the Week in your area

Helpful Links

Read more about European Week for Waste Reduction and how to take part here

To learn more or get involved in European Week for Waste Reduction please visit the website

This is also an area of concern which you might like to read about – Invisible but everywhere – the growing spread of microplastics via The Irish Times – click here to open.

About Recycle IT

Recycle IT is a friendly, needs driven recycler, recycling all types of waste electrical and electronic equipment. Collections are offered to homes, communities, educators and charities at no charge. Community engagement is achieved in many ways including building good relationships, offering collections and providing people with real help in lifting and moving equipment.  Recycle IT engage young and old, schools, charities and business and encourage reduce, reuse and recycle with the message reinforced through flyers, community events, workshops, newsletters, regular blog posts and recognition.

Please note – door to door community collections are on hold during Covid 19 restrictions

You can email Recycle IT here, call our team on 01 4578321 or visit our website www.recycleit.ie to get more information.

Seasonal Festive 

October is reuse month in Ireland and Halloween is at the end of October so we are hoping you might consider resuing this Halloween!

Halloween will be celebrated on Monday, October 31 2022. It is the day before All Saints’ Day and is also sometimes called All Hallows’ Eve.

This celebration originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. Over time, Halloween evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive gatherings, donning costumes and eating sweet treats.

The Challenge

Children, as we know, get very excited and love this time of the year! They keep asking how many weeks left until Halloween?  They love fancy dress, trick-or-treat visits and a toffee apple or two but individuals and families might also consider reducing and reusing over the weekend and recycling safely after Halloween. The one ongoing and yearly challenge with the celebration of Halloween witches, ghosts and the undead is the tonnes of extra waste which is created.

Eco Halloween

Halloween might be a fun time for the family and a good sales opportunity for businesses, but it’s not great for our planet or environment. It helps create tonnes of food waste, mountains of cheap plastic accessories and decorations and bags of never worn again costumes.

The National Geographic Society reports that plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues, and the rapidly increasing production of disposable plastic products has overwhelmed the world’s ability to deal with them.

Did you know, plastic production increased exponentially, from 2.3 million tons in 1950 to 448 million tons by 2015. Production is expected to double again by 2050.

Halloween is a time when we could make a decision to go plastic-free, with no plastic sweet wrappers, no plastic decorations, no plastic bags and no plastic costumes. We could even go a step further and reduce the number of sweets consumed!!

According to the Environmental Protection Agency people living in Ireland produce over 15 million tonnes of waste every year. We do this in our homes, our places of work and while undertaking leisure activities such as Halloween events. In 2016, each person living in Ireland produced, on average, 580 kg of municipal waste. This is well above the European average of 487 kg, and this type of waste is particularly difficult to recycle.

It is a real mixture of materials just dropped in the bin; do you think about how you dispose of your waste?

Here are 15 simple tips to help this year 

1: Don’t buy plastic trick-or-treat bags – how about using an old pillowcase.

2: Make your costumes at home. 

3: Host a local kids’ costume swap party prior to Halloween. 

4: Reuse, repurpose or donate old costumes to a charity shop

5: Cut down on sweet treats and particularly sweets in single wrappers. 

6: Bake your treats or make toffee apples at home. 

7: Fruit treats are an excellent idea for Halloween.

8: Eliminate plastic decorations. 

9: Use biodegradable or reusable plates and cups. 

10: Provide homemade finger foods and treats that can be eaten without plates.

11: Dispose of your pumpkin responsibly by composting and feeding it to animals.

12: Stay local when trick or treating – no carbon miles required.

13: Use LED mains-powered lights rather than battery-operated lights 

14: Avoid mass-produced plastic items sold for a euro – it’s a waste waiting to happen! 

15: Don’t buy any new bits to decorate the house, use existing items. 

16: If you do buy decorations, buy second-hand for reuse! 

Finally 

You don’t immediately think ‘zero-waste’ when you think about Halloween, but if you plan ahead and consider the above tips, you can have a lower-waste Halloween than last year.

Please do enjoy Halloween,, and if you do decide to go out for a walk at night stay safe, and visible and keep your hands clean.

About Recycle IT

Recycle IT is an award-winning social enterprise providing a community, personal and business collection service for all types of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in Dublin and surrounding counties.

Yearly Recycle IT offered drop-off and collection services to tens of thousands of homes, schools, charities and businesses across Dublin and surrounding areas collecting a range of WEEE which includes thousands of computers, cables, monitors, microwaves and screens

Recycle IT services are provided in partnership with WEEE Ireland. Recycle IT is supported by Pobal, Dormant Accounts, South Dublin County Council and authorized by the National Waste Collection Permit Office and the local authorities across Leinster.

The European Commission estimates e-waste to be one of the fastest growing waste streams in the EU, and expects it to grow to more than 12 million tonnes by the end of 2020. Waste electrical and electronic equipment is a complex mixture of materials and components. This type of waste has hazardous content, and if not effectively managed, can be detrimental to the environmental and lead to health problems. We also note, the production of modern electronics requires the use of a variety of scarce and expensive resources.

As we have increased usage it seems plastics are a key element in making many different components of electronic and electrical products, including phones, computers, laptops, tablets, TVs, screens, toys, vacuum cleaners, hairdryers, and larger household appliances. Plastic are a concern as there any may differ types used which makes easy recycling difficult.

There is a lot of time, energy, effort and money invested to improve the collection and recycling of plastics found in electronic waste (e-waste) but research by PloyCE suggest the plastics value chain is still too fragmented, and recycled plastics are still perceived as unattractive to the end-user.

A New Project

PolyCE is a project funded by the European Commission and consists of 20 partner organisations aiming to address the problem plastic waste relate to electronic equipment during the next 4 years. The idea is to greatly reduce the use of virgin plastics and enhancing the use of recycled plastics in new electronics of all types.

A potential roadblock is the classifying of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) plastics as “hazardous waste” This step risks making EU recycling of WEEE plastics impossible.

The POLYCE Newsletter from March 2020 states, most of WEEE plastics are high value tech plastics and technology exists in the EU to produce REACH and RoHS compliant Post-Consumer Recycled plastics and ensure safe plastic recycling. A small proportion of these WEEE plastics is compounded with flame retardant substances. Only a limited number of these Flame Retardants are restricted as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).

Opportunity

Recycling plastic of al types is a great opportunity to improve environmental wellbeing. Envirotec magazine says recycling electronic related plastic would reduce pressure on waste systems in Europe where approx 31% of plastic waste still enters landfills while 39% is incinerated. Another benefit comes with very tonne of plastic recycled helps avoid up to 3 tonnes of CO2 emissions created making new plastic.

Consumer of the Products?

A recent consumer survey carried out by the PolyCE project found that half of respondents did not know if they had ever bought a tech product that included recycled plastic. Of the 25% who said yes to the question, 86% noticed no difference in quality, appearance, or performance of the product they purchased.

While there is a growing awareness amongst people around the globe regarding the threats posed by everyday plastic waste, very little attention is given to the challenges of the waste plastic found in electronic devices used daily.

Do you know if you have purchased a phone, tablet or any electronic item manufactured with recycled plastic. Maybe next time you can check and request this option!

Moving Forward

At present plastics are needed for manufacturing the many different components of electronic and electrical products, experts in the PolyCE network said products can be designed in ways that make material recovery of plastic components easier. This will take some time to achieve so during that time please ensure your old electronic items are recycled using a permitted recycler. The current system might not be perfect, but it will develop and change!

For more information on this electronic plastic recycling project click here or visit the BBC website.

About Recycle IT

Recycle IT, is an award-winning social enterprise offering electrical, electronic and metal recycling services through drop off and collection. Services are provided in partnership with WEEE Ireland and South Dublin County Council.

Recycle IT are supported by the Department of Rural and Community Development, Pobal and Dormant Accounts and authorised by the National Waste Collection Permit Office and the local authorities across in Leinster.

For more information on Recycle IT please call 01 4578321, email info@recycleit.ie or visit our website www.recycleit.ie