Eco Evolution Blog

…..and so it began

Early last year Ferns Tidy Towns carried out a survey on the street to see how members of the community were managing to reduce single use plastic waste. They were surprised to discover that there was some confusion around whether or not plastic bottle caps could be recycled. A staggering 60% of those surveyed were putting them in their household waste bin! During litter picks there was also a considerable number of plastic caps discarded along the footpaths and communal areas.

The result of the on street survey accompanied by the statistics on the amount of plastic generated in Ireland made for some alarming reading. With this in mind the committee set about making plans for a project to highlight the effects of single use plastic on the environment. Putting their heads together they came up with a plan to design and make two murals using plastic bottle caps. This would bring attention to the plastic bottle cap dilemma and a novel way to highlight the damaging effects of plastic on the environment.

How much plastic do we generate?

• Up to 97 per cent of Irish plastic went to China because of our inability to deal with it at home up to 2017, before that market closed.
• 2.5 million plastic bottles are disposed of in Ireland every day.
• Ireland is the top producer of plastic waste in Europe; generating an average of 61kgs per person every year – almost double what the UK produces.
• We produce the equivalent of nearly 2,000 water bottles, or 5,550 disposal coffee cups, per person annually
• More than 60 per cent of plastic waste still comes from packaging – but only 40 per cent of that packaging is recycled
• In 2015, Ireland generated 282,148 tonnes of plastic packaging waste.
• 30 per cent of the EU’s plastic is recycled (the equivalent figure in Ireland is 34 per cent); 39 per cent is incinerated, 31 per cent goes to landfills.
• We have recycled 8.5 billion plastic bottles since 1997.

The details of the proposed bottle-cap mural project was submitted under the Waste Prevention Grant Scheme run by the Environment Section of Wexford County Council and the Southern Waste Region, Ferns Tidy Towns were successful in securing funding under this scheme. The idea behind the project was to highlight the negative impacts of single use plastics on our environment.

Plastic bottle caps second most littered item after cigarette butts.

• Bottle caps are often so small that it is easy to overlook the impact they have on the environment. If you drop one on the ground at the park or the beach, you may think it is not important. However, little caps bobbing in the water can look like an easy meal for a wide variety of wildlife, from fish and sea turtles to marine birds. The animals eat the tops, feel full, do not eat real food and die from starvation.
• Plastic bottle tops are one of the top 10 items found during marine debris beach clean-ups worldwide and are the second most littered item after cigarette butts. Over 100 million marine animals are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean. Most rubbish that ends up in the water begins its journey on land.
• It is estimated that by 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish. The plastic that finds its way into the oceans inevitably will pose a risk of ingestion by sea birds, fish, marine mammals, etc. It’s not uncommon to see articles of sea life found dead with significant amounts of plastic in their stomach.
• According to the United Nations, ingestion of plastic kills an estimated 1 million marine birds and 100,000 marine animals each year.
• Additionally, more than 90% of all birds and fish are believed to have plastic particles in their stomach. It’s because plastic breaks up into tiny pieces in the sea, which are then consumed by fish and other sea animals.

A helping hand from the community

Ferns Tidy Towns wanted a concrete way to show the local community the large impact such a small thing like a bottle cap could have. A call was put out to the community via social media looking for bottle caps of all colours, shapes and sizes. The plan was to get as many members of the community, both adults and children involved with recycling and waste prevention in a very hands on way. By helping to design and make the mural the community would remember not to drop the cap on the street or send them to landfill but to recycle them and better still eventually reduce their plastic waste by refusing single use plastic.

After five months a staggering 90kg of plastic bottle caps were collected. That’s just in our small community. Think of how many tops that is across the country in a year. Now imagine how many it would be worldwide. Now imagine how many that would be in 5 years, in 10… It really is mind blowing.

With a design in mind they asked the local art group, junior members of Ferns Tidy Towns and as many members of the community as possible to join them in making the mural. The plastic bottle caps were sorted into their various colours and sizes. Marine plywood was sourced for the backing board because it was suitable for outdoor use. After priming the two 8×4 sheets (cut into eight 4×2 lengths) with white emulsion the design was painted on using several layers of coloured water based emulsion paint testers and then to give the mural longevity it was finished with three coats of yacht varnish. The bottle caps were then glued into position. When the glue dried they were then painstakingly anchored into place with screws.

The message in the bottle caps

The mural was placed at the Community Vegetable garden and home composting demo site . Ferns Tidy Towns use this area to run workshops on reducing waste, composting, growing your own and water conservation.

The educational mural made from plastic bottle caps sends the message to the wider community about the importance of refusing/reducing/recycling plastic to help the environment and prevent plastic waste from damaging our marine life. The ocean theme mural will raise awareness of the harmful effects of plastic bottle caps on marine life and the wildflower/wildlife to raise awareness of the effects of plastic to our environment, wildlife and plants.

Ferns Tidy Towns hope the community will take a step back and look at the cap on their drinks bottle. It starts there. Each one makes a difference. Each one you keep out of the ocean and out of landfill, you keep out of our marine animals and the local environment. Thanks to everyone involved in helping to bring the vision of a ‘Plastic Free Ferns’ to life by creating the bottle cap murals.  

Interview on South East radio’s Morning Mix

Reducing single use drinking water plastic bottles

During the Summer of 2017 Ferns Tidy Towns contacted Refill.ie, a voluntary environmental project leading the way to make Ireland a tap water refilling country once again. Their aim was to prevent plastic waste through reducing the amount of single use drinking water plastic bottles consumed in Ferns of which a very significant portion end up on our streets and eventually finds its way to our waterways and seas.  To date they have an impressive fourteen refill points around the town ranging from businesses offering free tap water refills to public accessible taps registered on the Refill Ireland Tap Map.

Remember to use the right bottle – instead of buying disposable plastic water bottles every time you’re on the move, why not buy a reusable one and fill it up before you leave the house, saving money and the planet?

Following on from this success they worked with Wexford County Council and Gorey Municipal council to replace an old broken tap with a water fountain to enable people to refill on the go. A replica of an old water fountain was installed in the area where the old village pump once stood as it was an important feature in yesteryear. This has been a great success with people filling up on the go with fresh tap water.

Water conservation

Over the years Ferns Tidy Towns have concentrated on projects in the community to help reduce waste especially single use plastic and food waste, conserve water and working towards making Ferns a more sustainable village. In 2016 we won the Irish Water Value Award for the best small town in the South East region of the Supervalu Tidy Towns regional awards. The Value Water Award was about raising awareness of the importance of mindful water consumption within communities and reconnecting communities with water, creating a greater understanding of where water comes from and where waste water goes to. The project in 2016 focused on water conservation. The initiative promoted the use of rainwater harvesting in the community and the benefits of water conservation through education.

The Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Simon Coveney T.D., today launched a public consultation process in relation to a proposed legislative ban on certain products containing plastic microbeads. The public consultation process will last 6 weeks, closing on 24 March 2017.

Cosmetics, toothpastes and cleaning agents use plastic particles which can harm the marine environment

The Minister said ‘I am very worried about the level of plastic litter that ends up in our seas and oceans. This includes plastics microbeads found in some cosmetics, body care products, toothpastes, scouring agents and detergents and I am determined to address this issue. It is concerning to think that all plastic material which has ever ended up in the marine environment will reside there for many centuries to come, unless it is somehow removed. I regard microplastic pollution as one of most significant marine environmental challenges of the 21st century’.

While plastic microbeads represent only a fraction of the microplastics in our oceans, it has still been estimated that many billions are being washed into the world’s rivers, lakes and seas each year. Once in our seas and rivers they can last for centuries without breaking down. Due to their shape and size, they can be confused for food by fish and other aquatic creatures and they cannot be removed once they are in the marine environment.

Tiny plastic particles are sold in thousands of personal care products globally. With wastewater treatment plants not designed to filter them out due to their size, they can flow down the drain, into the sea and into the marine food chain. Microbeads are not biodegradable and once they enter the marine environment, they are impossible to remove.

Microbeads are just one part of the plastic-pollution problem in our oceans, lakes and rivers

Cosmetics companies have flooded hundreds of products, mostly facial scrubs, shampoo, toothpaste, and lip gloss with microbeads: tiny balls of plastic used to exfoliate our skin. You know, those plastic sand-sized microbeads added in order to give your favorite scrub a good gritty texture. One tube of facial scrub contains more than 300,000 plastic microbeads. Banning microbeads from personal use is pretty easy to do. Just check the label on products for polyethylene or polypropylene, which are the most commonly-used plastics.

Making a personal commitment not to purchase products that contain microbeads is a start and is commendable, but it won’t take the product off the shelves for others to buy. We need comprehensive legislation to ensure that happens.

The Department is inviting any interested parties to make submissions to help inform the legislative process. To get involved, please complete the online microbead survey or email your observations or comments to msfd@housing.gov.ie.

To assist you, relevant documents may be accessed by clicking on the following links. These include a summary document outlining why the consultation is taking place, which includes a questionnaire and OSPAR’s Regional Action Plan for the Prevention and Management of Marine Litter in the North Atlantic.

Terms & Conditions:

All submissions and comments received will be subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2014. Submissions are also subject to Data Protection legislation.

Submissions and comments will not be responded to on an individual basis but will be reviewed as part of the process and will feed into the deliberative process.

Different kinds of plastic can degrade at different times and on average it takes 1,000 years for one plastic bottle to breakdown in a landfill.  Most plastic bottles consist of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) which is made from petroleum and will never biodegrade. About 1.6 million barrels of oil are used every year to make the bottles. The bottled water is then transported long distances via lorries and energy is also used by on board refrigeration methods which makes it a very unsustainable choice.

Although polyethylene bottles don’t biodegrade, they do photodegrade. When exposed to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight they become brittle and start to crack. Plastic bottles buried in a landfill rarely sees the light of day but in the ocean, which is where a lot of discarded plastic bottles end up it is a far different story. With the combination of warm ocean water and sunlight the plastic bottles can break down in as little as a year. Good news you might think but the plastic is broken down into small fragments which are toxic and sadly end up in the stomach of marine animals and birds. The fragments are also washed up and dispersed along our shoreline where we can come in contact with the toxins.

There is no noticeable difference between most bottled water and tap water, either in taste or quality, so it’s much more sustainable to get your water straight from the tap!

You Choose!

Bottled or Tap Water ~ You Choose.