Press Release: Making Reuse and Recycling Happen
BHCfurniture offers a complete remanufacturing service for products including reupholstering, respraying and reassembly, with the same or upgraded components. Refuse Vehicle Solutions Ltd (RVS)providesmaintenance, remanufacturing and parts services for refuse vehicles that extends operational lifetimes to 15+ years. These are just some of the many ways that businesses are exploring new opportunities through the Circular Economy.
In a Circular Economy, resources are kept in use for as long as possible, to extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life. Reuse and recycling are at the core of this concept.
By 2030 the European Commission expects reuse, recycling and other measures to save the European economy €600 billion per year. According to environmental services company Veolia[1], adopting a circular economy could create €1.65 billion of GDP in Ireland.
However, more innovative business models like those above will be needed as will a wider acceptance by the public and authorities of reused goods when making purchasing decisions to achieve the full ambition of the Circular Economy. And the challenges are tough: high labour intensity for repair and refurbishment makes it difficult to compete with cheap new products and poor design or a lack of spare parts are other issues making reuse problematic.
The current estimated level of reuse for consumer goods in Ireland is just 24,000 tonnes per annum, although this does not capture all reuse activity. This amounts to 1% of the materials discarded for recycling, recoveryor landfill in 2013.Clearly there is significant scope for growth in this sector locally.
According to Dara Lynott, Deputy Director-General of the EPA “Our consumption patterns are at the heart of the challenge to live better and use less. If we want our grandchildren to have the same opportunities we have had then we need to fundamentally change how our everyday needs are created and met. We need to rethink, and redesign, what we mean by social and economic ‘prosperity’ in order to deliver the resilience essential for us to prevail. In other words we need to think globally and act sustainably locally.”
Driving this growth is a priority for the Community Reuse Network of Ireland (CRNI), which was set up to support community based reuse and recycling organisations and promote the sector an all island basis. Through reuse and recycling, CRNI members currently provide 690 jobsand over7,650 voluntary and training opportunities mainly delivered by social enterprises. These jobshelp to prevent the marginalisation of unemployed people and enhance the wellbeing of local communities and economies.
The CRNI is holding an international conference on 12th October to explore how Ireland can adopt innovative new business models to realise the full potential of the sector. A range of experts from Ireland, the US, Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands will come together to discuss leasing, sharing and social enterprise models and look at how these will evolve with Europe’s ambition through the Circular Economy package.
This will also coincide with Reuse Month October,a nationwide campaign of events coordinated by the three regional waste offices.
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