Maire O Brien
Online education trainer, specialising in inclusiveness in education:
- Experienced in the development of blended learning programmes for students of a variety of ages and abilities, in the essential skills of numeracy, literacy and computer skills, replicable in community centres and schools, internationally.
Environmental activist - to implement real change:
- working on implementing a pilot council reuse centre in Ireland with a humantarian export branch. This has been included in the council's draft development plan for 2022. This is a project that is replicable nationally and internationally and could reduce waste, and climate change substantially.
Call for Action!
‘Arís’– Pilot Irish Reuse Centre
Mainstreaming the reuse sector in the circular economy internationally
The race for deploying has started – Join Us!
If you have an interest in being part of a being part of a unique and innovative pilot reuse–refit–upcycle scheme, please express your interest as soon as possible and join this Living Lab.
What is Arís?
Arís is initiating the mainstreaming of an innovative reuse-upcycle-reborn concept and giving birth to a new sector of reuse combined with humanitarian aid.
Our mission locally is to:
· pilot a nationally replicable re-use/renewal/upcycling ‘mood’ or ‘fashion’, create a stream of desirable cheap used stuff for purchase,
· underpinning this with environmental and humanitarian values,
· based on reuse and resell centres hosted by councils,
· provide opportunities for training, employment and business, locally, nationally and globally,
· improve our carbon footprint and our climate action,
· while meeting EU targets for recycling and recommendations by UNU, UNOP, UNHCR etc.
We call this concept ‘20k Tons Reuse Centre’. While we imagine the premises is only 15-25% of the whole concept, its more of a ‘circular economy platform’ dedicated to large experiments.
What will be reused?
The used stream of goods can be:
· Electrical appliances
· Construction materials
· Furniture
· Bikes, toys, books
· Household goods in general
Where is Arís based? Ireland and Developing Countries
How will Arís Reuse Centre be operated?
This centre can be managed by a council, beside recycling centres.
Any number of organisations can also be involved in selling/fixing/exporting the stream of goods.
There are a number of sectors needed to run it:
1. Communications: awareness, advocacy and education of the public about the importance of reuse of resources, especially during Covid!
2. Contact centre: national call number/website for people to find out how to reuse their goods.
3. Collection points: a variety of ways and collection points to get the goods to the centre.
4. Reuse centre, serving as a collection, repair and resale centre, like recycle centres, on Council ground. 5 to 30% of resources received could have another life in Ireland.
5. Export >70% to ECC and abroad.
A better organization of resources will have benefits nationally and globally, as you are aware.
Why should we develop this unique Reuse Centre model?
Nationally, it will:
1. Help Ireland achieve its EU recycling targets of 50%, missed this year by approx 250,000 tonnes. This could be achieved by exporting 10,000 containers of unwanted Irish resources, which would be only 2.5% of Dublin’s port capacity. The containers could leave via Rosslare Port also.
2. Reduce landfill, Ireland’s will be full in less than 11 years
3. Create real employment opportunities in centres, more than in the recycling sector, which provides 6,500 jobs
4. Create a supply of cheap resources, here and abroad, reducing the need to buy new stuff.
5. Improve our carbon footprint
6. Improve the sustainable life cycle of goods
7. Improve our humanitarian aid efficiency and image, especially since Ireland has a seat on the UN committee.
How will it benefit climate change internationally?
Section 2: International arm – ‘Arís Abroad’ or RICHA, ‘Reuse as an Instrument for Co-development and Humanitarian Action’.
This addresses the international side of the operation, valuing unwanted resources – the other side of the black hole, the white hole!
50-60% of unwanted resources are valuable somewhere else but not in Western Europe. Assessing the value chain of the resources shows that unwanted resources here could be managed/donated to developing countries, where it is financially viable to repair and resell them. So, instead of landfilling the resources, we suggest they could be exported in containers and managed/donated abroad, as recommended by the UNU. For example, in Europe, the countries that could be interested are Latvia and Ukraine who might take 30%, and further afield might take 40-50%.
We need to process the 70-80% of the unneeded resources, and all countries are legally responsible for the costs of transportation and processing unneeded stuff.
RICHA1’s vision is to mainstream reuse as a Covid instrument industry for co-development and co-resilience. This process requires investment; it can’t be funded by classic LIFE/ERDF European funds but it can be by humanitarian aid organisations and UNO agencies, such as big NGOs, (Europe Aid Horizon, AITF, Irish Aid, UKAID, USAID, Japan, ILO, GCF, GEF etc). The costs linked to this are: premises, training etc – the same investment as the European side but obviously more oriented to repair-upcycle facilities, ie factory.
On the other side, before receiving the resources, funding can be applied to develop processes to sell, repair the goods. For example, local small NGOs and organisations (eg Akamasoa) can apply for GCF, UNO, GIZ/AFD and other funding bodies to finance the process for used resources:
How will this pilot reuse centre be funded?
This pilot to reduce climate change with real action needs funding:
The first target could be:
- Horizon funding body
- ERC (Horizon) for research side and other calls quite soon.
- LIFE calls are expected soon
- ERDF and INTERREG calls are in the pipelines
There will be more calls. All these funds could certainly more than support the Irish and Europe branch of this European operation. If you are a body, such as a charity, a federation, university researcher, a council county, an NGO, a government body, you might be interested to join our action group to find funding.
Financing the process to reuse resources will:
- Allow research and experimentations, testing processes.
- Promote training and generate many jobs there, by creating highly trained technicians able to repair a variety of goods in a cost effective manner where markets exist and are not fulfilled.
This would create a stream of cheap and used goods benefitting development and allowing reciprocity - developing the co-development concept.
This circular economy platform or ‘reuse centre and factory abroad’ project side named WISHA2 has gained attention of UNO agencies (UNHCR, UNDP) and is competing right now to implement reuse-refit-craft workshops in Africa/ASEAN. The proposal includes using European unneeded resources as training materials in Asia/Africa. As a development instrument it can generate a reuse economy. One of the benefits of co-development is building up co-resilience, especially if any new crisis occurs by allowing the maintenance of supply chains.
Who is supporting this project?
- The Minister, Ossian Smyth, responsible for the circular economy in Ireland supports this project.
- Our local council, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, agreed by majority vote of its councillors to include it in its draft development plan, to be finalized October 2021.
- CRNI, Community Resources Network Ireland, supports this too.
Are you interested? We would like to hear from you.
If you are a body, such as a charity, a federation, university researcher, a council county, an NGO, a government body, you might be interested to join our action group to find funding.
The Arís reuse scheme and international RICHA arm are very exciting and worthwhile projects. We know we have many values in common with your organization. If you have any questions, please contact us - we would appreciate hearing from you.
ALSO: Contributor to policy writing for Green Party, Ireland, in the areas of education, social inclusiveness and the environment.
