Households in Midlands encouraged to recycle old Christmas lights
Households in the Midlands are being urged to recycle any Christmas lights in their homes that are no longer usable.
Unused Christmas lights can be dropped into Golden Island Shopping Centre in Athlone, the Bridge Shopping Centre in Tullamore, or Harbour Place Shopping Centre in Mullingar for recycling.
KMK Metals Recycling Ltd, has placed specially designed trolleys in each shopping centre to make it easy for shoppers to drop off old and broken Christmas lights and the company will make a donation to the Midlands Simon Community for every set of lights recycled.
The trolleys will remain in place until the end of January giving people the opportunity to take down their festive decorations and recycle any indoor or outdoor Christmas lights that are no longer working. People are asked to use the trolleys solely for recycling Christmas lights and to remove any packaging beforehand.
General Manager of KMK Metals Recycling, Max Kyck, said: “Everyone is busy at this time of year, so it can be tempting to put off bringing the tangled-up bundles of Christmas lights into the recycling centre and easier to just shove them back up into the attic for another year. Or worse still put them in the general waste bin. If everyone thinks like this however, valuable resources that can be extracted from e-waste, instead lie forgotten about, in boxes, garages and attics around the country.
"We have made it as simple as possible by installing special containers in three of the busiest shopping centres in the Midlands, so consumers can fill their reusable shopping bags with the old and broken lights and then drop them off on their way in to do some Christmas shopping. “
Mr Kyck continued: “With rents continuing to spiral and the cost of living crisis getting worse by the day, the Midlands Simon Community needs our help. More and more people are becoming homeless, and Midlands Simon relies on fundraising to provide their essential services. We believe it is very important to include them as one of our charity partners this year, but feel that it is a good idea to tie our donation into the Christmas lights recycling campaign in order to raise more awareness of this important charity and also the need to recycle e-waste properly.”
Midlands Simon Community offers many services to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, to help get them back on their feet as quickly as possible. The charity offers services and support to people in the Midlands region of Westmeath, Offaly, Laois and Longford and aims to help users of the service to rebuild their lives and move out of homelessness into a permanent home.
KMK Metals Recycling Ltd. provides for the environmentally sound management of waste metal in all its forms and collects approximately 80% of Ireland’s e-waste, bringing it to two state-of-the-art facilities in Tullamore and Kilbeggan where it is processed by a team of highly-qualified staff using the best available technology. The company employs approximately 140 local people.