Some 75,000 tonnes of packaging will be dumped over Christmas, including enough steel to replicate Dublin’s Spire 400 times over, it was claimed today.
Over the Christmas period, Repak estimates people will go through over eight million mince pies, 1.4 million tins of biscuits and four million boxes of chocolates.
They will wash them down with over 19 million bottles of wine, four million bottles of spirits, a 45 million cans of beer and 22 million cans of soft drinks. The amount of alcoholic drinks is enough to fill Lough Derg more than 50 times.
Repak says people will use enough glass to produce over 12 billion glass Christmas baubles and enough plastic bottles to produce 483,114 fleece Santa suits.
It urged families to think of the environment and separate recyclables from their rubbish over the festive season as it hopes to collect 48 per cent of all packaging waste.
Repak chief executive Dr Andrew Hetherington said: “Christmas is a great moment to celebrate and balancing it with environmental concerns is something that householders across the country can achieve with some simple behavioural changes.”
Last year Repak supported the recycling of nearly 36,000 tonnes of used packaging over the Christmas period, up 6 per cent up on the previous year.