PURE project collects 12 tonnes of illegal rubbish since January
By Mary Dennehy
MORE than 12 tonnes of rubbish has been removed from the Dublin Mountains since the start of January, with people living in communities close to the rural uplands encouraged to report any sightings of illegal dumping.
The PURE Project is an environmental partnership project which, the first of its kind in Ireland, works alongside statutory and non-statutory organisations and communities – and last year, for example, worked with people living in Glenasmole and students attending Collinstown Park Community College in Clondalkin and the Holy Family, Rathcoole.
Ian Davis, the manager of the project, told The Echo that since the PURE truck went back on the road in early January, it has collected more than 12 tonnes of illegal dumping – with the organisation appealing to people living close to and using the mountains to report any incidents of dumping.
Ian said: “We received a huge number of reports regarding illegal dumping since we started back.
“We are again appealing to householders not to hand over their waste to unauthorised waste collectors and to check that they have a legitimate waste collection permit, because if they don’t have one, it will be dumped in the Dublin Mountains and the householder is also responsible”.
Since PURE began in 2006, it has removed over 2,600 tonnes of rubbish from the Wicklow/Dublin landscape and in 2015 the project removed more than 230 tonnes of illegal dumping with last January being one of the busiest months of that year, with a massive 25 tonnes collected.
“The PURE Truck removed illegal dumping from over 300 sites in the South Dublin Mountains in 2015”, Ian said.
“We record all incidents of dumping on a GPS/GIS database system and also photograph every site we come across and from this we have built up a baseline data on dumping patterns, date, location, type of waste and the amount rubbish dumped at each site, and the post-Christmas period can be one of the busiest for the project.
“If you were to put all the rubbish that PURE has collected into standard household rubbish bags you would fill over 370,000 bags. If you lined up each of these bags they would stretch the same distance as a journey from Tallaght to Dingle in County Kerry.”
PURE is encouraging those living in communities close to the mountains, such as Tallaght, Rathfarnham, Clondalkin, Templeogue and Bohernabreena, to help it protect the rural uplands and to report illegal dumping to Lo-Call 1850 365 121.
For further information on the PURE project, which runs a number of training and educational programmes with schools, email info@pureproject.ie or visit www.pureproject.ie
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