Bottle cap mural adds twist of colour to Milltownpass

Milltownpass Tidy Towns unveiled a new bottle cap mural in the centre of the village last Friday as a means to highlight the volume of single-use plastics in circulation and their impact on the environment.

The colourful mural, designed by Milltownpass Tidy Towns youth officer Wayne Wright, depicts a mill wheel to acknowledge the local heritage as one of the first villages in Ireland to have its own electricity supply. A mill on the Milltown River, now long gone, provided power to the village long before rural electrification.

Wayne said: “For the month of April we did a plastic bottle caps drive and encouraged the community to collect their used bottle caps for us with the intention of creating a sustainability mural.

“We were amazed with the response from our small community – more than 10,000 caps were collected and we used more than 9,000 in the mural. Our PRO Aoife Lynskey and I began the process of creating the mural about a month ago, and we enlisted the help of the Scouts and other volunteers.

“Out of the 22 million plastic bottles purchased in Ireland each week, only 30% are recycled. The rest end up in landfill or in the ocean, creating untold harm to the planet.

"We decided to create the bottle cap mural as a way to raise awareness of the volume of single-use plastics in use, even in a small community like ours.

“Our hope is that by working together as a community we can reduce our plastic usage and recycle where possible in order to do our bit for the planet.”

Milltownpass Tidy Towns would like to thank St Joseph’s NS and the wider community for saving their bottle caps. Thanks also to the volunteers who worked on the mural and particularly the 9th Westmeath Scouts for their help in sorting the bottle caps and creating the mural.

Milltownpass Tidy Towns also thank SkyClad Ltd for allowing the mural to be displayed on their premises and for their help in hanging it.