What are the issues?

The Senior Room students at St.Augustine’s N.S, Clontuskert have completed research on recycling and waste management. This website has been created to showcase our research and findings.

Our goal is to tackle the lack of a system-wide synchronisation of recycling symbols in the EU.

We have collected data to investigate the use of Waste Management Symbols on packaging in Ireland. We have especially focused on the use of the Green Dot, as we have identified this as a problem in Ireland and across the EU.

This is the Green Dot

This is the Recycling Symbol.

72% of Adults could not identify the Green Dot.

84% of Adults thought it was the Recycling Symbol.

This is a problem as over 30% of items surveyed has the GreenDot on packaging and cannot be recycled.

This waste makes its way into the Recycling stream of Waste Management companies, where it has to be sorted and discarded for Landfill. This is a waste of time, money and resources that could be better used.

We brought our project to the Galway Science and Technology Festival and in March 2019 we will showcase our work at the ESB Science Blast in the RDS in Dublin. We are continuing to research of the issues involved and hope to action change in Ireland by lobbying for a streamlined approach to this issue.