Give new life to old stuff this October

REUSE is the new recycling and a good example is BHC furniture which offers a complete remanufacturing service for products, including reupholstering, respraying and reassembly, with the same or upgraded components. MUD Jeans allows customers to shop guilt-free and do good for the environment while still looking fashionable. And 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 in order 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 Veolia1, 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.

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 just one per cent 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 on 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 jobs help to prevent the marginalisation of unemployed people and enhance the wellbeing of local communities and economies.

Reuse Month is going to run during October of this year, and a nationwide campaign of events coordinated by the three regional waste offices will be held throughout the country.

MUD Jeans – working on the idea the re-use is better than refuse.