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Recycle - Only if you can't reuse |
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Written by Interview with Clare Dunne
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Tuesday, 30 November 2004 |
Clare Dunne has worked with Offaly Co.Co. for several years as
their environmental officer.
She works within the communities of Offaly promoting awareness of the environment
and legislation protecting it with a practical slant on what the individual can
do.
Her mantra is reduce and re-use and only recycle if you can’t reduce! She
thinks that we need to reassess our consumer tendencies. Resources are finite,
and recycling cannot solve that. Instead it can make us over comfortable and prone
to ignoring the need to Reduce consumption.
Clare works with a wide range of groups from children participating in the An
Taisce Green Schools’ Initiative to teenagers and women’s groups.
Considering that women inside the home are more exposed to pollutants than those
working outside an increased awareness of products and their ingredients could
actually be a life saver.
Clare, a mother herself can regularly be heard on Local radio or met in shopping
centres promoting the use of re-useable nappies.
Standard nappies make up 4-7% of Ireland’s waste. To bring it down to the
micro, one baby will use up to 50% of your bin space and in two years of nappy
wearing will make a 2.5tonne odiferous heap that will take 200-500 years to degrade.
That’s a sobering thought, and one which every parent must acknowledge.
Clare’s response: ‘Use Reusable nappies. Modern design and natural
materials make this a realistic choice, far removed from the washing board horror
cycle that makes many mother’s pale to remember and without the terror of
the terry pin prick that is a threat to every normal wriggling baby.’
Ultimately Clare argues that the responsibility for our environment is down to
the individual, and our choices as consumers.
Even when we pay someone to take away our waste it is up to us to make sure that
the company is licensed with a waste recycling permit. If your waste ends-up in
an illegal dump it’s your problem.
How to find a reliable company? Ring the environmental section of your Co. Co.
and ask if a company is above board.
As Ireland moves into line with our European neighbours it will become standard
to pay for waste collections. And so it will remain in our interests to reduce
our waste.
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