As advocated by Ireland Donates, a key step is the re-using or recycling of
items for the benefit of others. By donating a computer or office furniture to a
charity or voluntary group in your community,
you are saving it from the dump by prolonging its use. This results
in a number of
benefits:
1) The
landfills in Ireland have limited capacity - e.g. landfills in the
Dublin region only have three more years of capacity left*. Your
donation will result
in less waste being disposed in these landfills.
2) Your
donation means that a charity does not have to buy a new item. This
helps save energy
and reduces the amount of greenhouse gases that would have been
generated as result of the
production and distribution of new items.
3) Reusing an
item such as a desk, filing cabinet or a computer conserves our natural
resources
such as timber, water, and minerals.
4) Donating or
lending a used item to a charity counts as part of your organisations
Corporate
Social Responsibility. Also since most charities and groups can pick up
donated items direct from
your organisation, you will save on the logistics of dumping those
items.
Don't forget
that by donating or lending an item, you are giving direct help and
assistance to the social and voluntary sector.
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More ways to go
green!
The European Commission has initiated a project called
"You Control the Environment". This
campaign lists other solutions that will help you reduce your impact on
the planets climate (and
also save money as a result!). These include:
-
Turn down the heat.
Reducing the temperature by just 1°C can cut 5-10% off your
family's energy bill and avoid up to 300kg of CO2
emissions per household and year.
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-
Programme your thermostat
so that at night or while you are out of the house, the temp. is
set low and by the time you wake up or return home, the
temperature is comfortable again. This
can reduce your heating bill by 7-15%.
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-
Replace your old single-glazed windows with double-glazing.
This requires a bit of upfront investment, but will halve the
energy lost through windows and pay off in the long term.
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- Bring used
glass to the bottle bank and sort paper and cardboard,
plastics and cans from
the rest of your waste. Recycling one aluminium can saves 90% of
the energy needed to produce
a new one - 9kg of CO2 emissions per kilogramme of
aluminium! For 1kg of recycled plastics, the saving is 1.5kg of CO2;
for 1kg of recycled glass, it is 300gr of CO2; and
recycling 1kg of paper instead of landfilling it avoids 900gr of
CO2 emissions as well as methane emissions.
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-
Don't let heat escape from your house over a long period.
When airing your house, open the windows for only a few minutes.
If you leave a small opening all day long, the energy needed to
keep it warm inside during six cold months (10°C or less outside
temperature) would result in
almost 1 tonne of CO2
emissions.
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For further information concerning
these issues and others, take a look at the following:
European
Commission "You Control the Environment" Campaign - www.climatechange.eu.com
Test the size of your carbon footprint! - www.mycarbonfootprint.eu
What will Climate Change mean for Ireland? - www.combatclimatechange.ie Race
against Waste - www.raceagainstwaste.com* If
you have any questions concerning the information listed here, please
feel free to contact Shane at admin@irelanddonates.com |
