"Key Green Christmas Facts"
Of packaging waste alone, it is estimated that the increased consumer activity [at Christmas] generates an additional 80,000 tonnes of waste or 170 million used packaging containers. This is equivalent to -
• 20 million wine bottles
• 48 million aluminium beer cans
• 35 million soft drinks cans
• 13 million beer bottles
• 45 million plastic drinks bottles
• 2.5 million spirit bottles
• 4 million cardboard sweet boxes
• 2.5 million cardboard toy boxes
• 4 million rolls of wrapping paper.
• Recycling just one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60 watt bulb for 6 hours
• It takes just 25 two litre plastic beverage bottles to make one adult size fleece jacket
• Each household will have generated circa 60 kilos of used packaging or 82,000 tonnes of packaging will have been consumed over the Christmas period
• Repak are targeting to collect and recycle 40% of the Christmas packaging waste generated over the holiday period. This is equivalent to 23 kilos per household or 32,000 tonnes of used packaging
• Last year, Repak recycled nearly 29,000 tonnes of used packaging, which was 67% up on the previous year
• In terms of volume, the 44 million litres of alcohol we will have consumed at Christmas, is enough liquid to fill 29 Olympic sized swimming pools
• If all the glass wine and beer bottles were laid out end-to-end, the resulting tower would stretch from Ireland to Sri Lanka, a distance of over 9,000 kilometres
• 23,000 tonnes of cardboard and paper packaging alone is generated, the weight of nearly 4,000 elephants
• If all the wrapping paper was laid out side-by-side, it would cover an area of 89 kilometres by 89 kilometres, which is enough to cover half the size of Leinster.
• Last year, Repak Green Christmas helped to grow packaging recycling to nearly 29,000 tonnes in December 05/January 06, compared to 17,000 tonnes the previous year - an increase of over 65% on the same period in the previous year or 9,000 tonnes over the target tonnages of 20,000 tonnes.
Source:
http://www.enviro-solutions.com/news-recycling.htm