Rising consumption levels will result in unprecedented levels of household waste, as Ireland celebrates Christmas under a mountain of wrapping paper, wine bottles, beer cans and cardboard packaging.

It is expected that each household will generate 60 kilos of used packaging during the festive period.

Repak, the not-for-profit recycling agency, has warned that householders must do more to ensure that as much domestic waste as possible is recycled. The agency estimates that 40% of Christmas packaging will be recycled and while this represents an increase on previous years, it still leaves a massive amount of waste unnecessarily clogging up landfill.

Darrell Crowe of Repak said householders could be doing more to ensure that pressure is taken off the landfill sites. While the 'pay-byweight' waste disposal system has led to increased use of recycling, there is still much waste being needlessly placed into landfill, he said.

Repak aims to collect 40% of Christmas packaging, which amounts to roughly 32,000 tonnes of used packaging. Last year a total of 29,000 tonnes of packaging was recycled following the Christmas period, while 17,000 tonnes of packaging was recycled the previous year.

Among the domestic waste expected to be produced this Christmas are 20 million wine bottles, 48 million aluminium beer cans, 35 million soft drinks cans, 13 million beer bottles, 45 million plastic drinks bottles, and 2.5 million spirit bottles. In addition to the waste produced through drinks consumption, it is expected that we will discard four million cardboard sweet boxes, 2.5 million cardboard toy boxes, and four million rolls of wrapping paper.

Crann, Ireland's voluntary tree organisation, has appealed to people to purchase real Christmas trees instead of plastic versions. Real Christmas trees can be disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner, whereas plastic trees cannot, said a spokeswoman.

As well as being environmentally friendly in terms of disposal, each real Christmas tree also removes 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide during its nine years before maturing. Most local authorities now offer designated drop-off points for Christmas tree recycling as part of their Christmas recycling campaigns.

>> Over 44 million litres of alcohol will be consumed in Ireland over Christmas . . . enough to fill 29 Olympic-sized swimming pools >> The contents of over 48 million aluminium beer cans will be consumed over Christmas, together with that of 20 million wine bottles and 13 million beer bottles >> If all the wine and beer bottles purchased in Ireland over Christmas were laid out, they would stretch for 9,000km . . . or roughly the distance between Ireland and Sri Lanka >> Over 23,000 tonnes of cardboard and paper packaging will be generated, which is the weight of nearly 4,000 elephants >> Enough wrapping paper will be used to cover an area measuring 89 kilometres by 89 kilometres, which is enough to cover half the size of Leinster SOURCE: REPAK