Pure Statistics

Since the establishment of the Pure project, the phone-line 1800 365 123, and the Pure office, have received over 15,900 reports of illegal dumping resulting in over 14,800 collections and the removal of approximately 3,960 tonnes (3,960,000kg) tonnes of rubbish from the landscape.

If you were to put all this rubbish into standard household rubbish bags, you would fill over 400,000 bags.   If you lined up each of the bags that Pure has removed from the landscape, they would stretch all the way from Dublin to Dingle.

The figures above exclude the amounts collected by each of the local authorities associated with the Pure project.  Fridges, washing machines, cookers, TV’s, baths, batteries, furniture, black bags of rubbish, builders rubble, toilets, car tyres, and much more are collected on a regular basis from some of the most aesthetic, scenic, and frequented areas in Ireland.

The Pure project encounter varying degrees of indiscriminate acts of illegal dumping, from a single black bag left on a road side, to tonnes of illegally dumped rubbish in a forest.  There is no need for illegal dumping as all local recycling centres accept unwanted goods such as glass, cans, plastics, plastic bottles and containers, cardboard, newspaper and magazines, office paper, batteries, and much more.  Material not excepted at recycling centre can be brought to your nearest landfill site.

Under the government’s Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment Directive, (WEEE), your local re-cycling centre will also accept all of your old electrical appliances FREE OF CHARGE. Fridges, washing machines, cookers, TV’s and various other electrical equipment can be left into recycling centres where they are decontaminated and disassembled, with no cost to the public.  Alternatively, if you are replacing and electrical appliance, the retailer must take back the used one; this is also FREE OF CHARGE.  The same system applies if you are having a new electrical item delivered to your home.  Buy a new washing machine, give them the old one.  It’s simple.

Although the introduction of the WEEE directive has seen a dramatic decline in the dumping of these materials, unfortunately, the Pure truck continues to regularly collect electrical appliances from the landscape.  Over 500 single items of electrical equipment was collected in 2007 which increased to over 800 in 2008.   Fortunately since 2009 we have witness a reduction in the amount of electrical equipment dumped in the uplands.  These items contain numerous hazardous materials and cause substantial damage to our environment and there is no reason why any of this material should end up in our environment.