Recycling Campaigns Available in Small Changes Inchicore
Recycling isn’t a solution to the plastic crisis and we encourage you to reuse whenever you can. But for when you can’t – try to choose the best recycling option. Our national recycling system isn’t ideal so here is a great ways to make sure your waste is recycled into something of use:
Recycle your HDPE bottle caps from milk cartons and drinks bottles with us! We’re a drop-off point for empty clean HDPE Plastic Bottle Caps collection on behalf of Precious Plastic Dublin.
How it works:
Bring your empty HDPE bottle caps to our shop. Generally these caps will be from tetra packs like milk cartons etc. or from water bottle/fizzy drink bottles and the rings from these caps too. Billions of plastic bottles and drink cartons are sold and opened every day. While the bottles are mainly made from PET plastic and the drink cartons from a mix of plastic, metal and paper, most of the caps are made from HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene), a really strong, lightweight and waterproof polymer. HDPE has SPI resin ID code 2 so you should see a number 2 inside a triangle shape in the cap.
What happens to the bottle caps?
Precious Plastic Dublin use the caps to make new and long-lasting products right here in Dublin and demonstrate that there is immense value in waste plastic.
Could I not just put them in my own recycle bin:
Yes, you could but here’s some figures explaining what happens to our recycling in Ireland: 34% of our plastic is recycled with 39% being incinerated and 31% going to landfill. 60% of our plastic waste comes from packaging but only 40% of that is recycled. Also, the same piece of plastic can only be recycled a maximum of 2-3 times before it is rendered useless and sent to landfill. Whereas if you collect your bottle caps for Precious Plastic Dublin, you know they are being used for something useful that will last.
More info:
https://www.preciousplasticdublin.org/collecting-hdpe-bottle-caps-recycling/
We unfortunately had to cease our crisp packet collection due to Terracycle no longer working with An Post.
Donation Campaigns
Eco-Period Box for Homeless Period Ireland. Donate plastic-free period products in our shop and we’ll pass them on to Homeless Period Ireland
In 2018 Ella Daish began campaigning in the UK to remove plastic from period products, which led her to take action on another issue: Period poverty. Ella created the Eco Period Box to help address this, Eco Period Boxes were placed in stores to enable customers to make a donation. In April 2019 we were the first Irish store to join Ella’s campaign and have since continued to take your generous donations. We accept plastic-free pads and tampons – reusables are not suitable due to health & safety as the majority of beneficiaries do not have regular access to clean running water. All donations from our store go to Homeless Period Ireland.
We are a Tree Partner with Reforest Nation.
We have pledged to plant 150 Irish native trees per year with Reforest Nation. Ireland, was once the most forested country in Europe, over thousands of years of deforestation our forests were reduced to just 1% by the 1920s. Since then our forest cover has increased to 11% still lower than any other country in Europe. This eleven-fold increase, however, is quite misleading, as only 2% of Ireland is actually covered in native Irish trees, the other 9% is non-native conifer plantations. These mono-cultures provide very little habitat for our native wildlife as they spent millions of year evolving in a different ecosystem on the other side of the planet. Reforest Nation are an Irish environmental social enterprise with the purpose of helping restore Ireland’s biodiversity through the planting of native trees while helping people across the nation and the world become carbon neutral. For more info visit: https://www.reforestnation.ie