October is Ireland’s National Reuse Month
October is Ireland’s National Reuse Month and Mayor of Waterford City and County Cllr John O’Leary recently launched Reuse Month 2022 at Waterford’s Central Library.
Reuse is about valuing our stuff, by repairing and reusing it for as long and as often as possible. This avoids the need to extract raw materials, manufacture and distribute new stuff, and avoids waste, all of which cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions. The idea is to bring people beyond the idea of “reduce, reuse and recycle” towards a focus on the prevention of waste in the first place.
National Reuse Month’s aim is to provide the skills and tools to reuse more items every day. For example, you may have already reused by getting shoes resoled rather than replacing them, or borrowing books from the library. To cut down on waste and greenhouse gas emissions, why not go another step this October and prioritise repair, buying second hand, borrowing, swapping and reusing.
There are a whole host of events taking place throughout the city and county to encourage waste prevention.
On October 19th, a Clothes Swap event will be hosted in the Central Library, Lady Lane from 5.30pm. Bring up to five pieces of clean adult clothing (in good repair) to the library and swap it for the same number of items. Clothes can be dropped off at the library between 11am and 5.30pm on the day. There will also be a clothing repair demonstration on the night, along with the launch of a ‘toolkit’ for swap events to encourage reuse and repair. The toolkit will provide tips, posters and social media posts to enable community groups and schools to run swap events for items such as sports equipment, clothes, musical instruments, school supplies and more.
On October 22nd, Waterford City and County Council will host a Repair Demonstration session with the Rediscovery Centre at the Coastguard Cultural Centre in Tramore. Learn how to repair furniture, bikes, textiles and washing machines during this session. There will be experts on hand to help with any questions that you have and while the repair experts won’t be able to undertake any specific repairs on your items, please feel free to bring along photographs of your items and they will happily chat to you about the repair.
- 11.30am – Furniture Repair and Upcycling
- 12pm – Bike Repairs
- 12.30pm – Appliance Repairs
- 1pm – Textiles Repair and Upcycling
Waste prevention workshops will be held on various dates in library branches. The focus of these workshops is making a reusable food wrap that provides a natural alternative to plastic wraps and to provide a forum to discuss reuse, composting and recycling as the wraps are being made. On October 28th there will be a Sustainable Living Tips workshop in Lismore Library. Come along to learn about Greener Gardening, Greener Cleaning, composting, food waste prevention and general waste prevention tips.
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