Stephen Collins: politicians should look at a plastic bottle refund scheme

With so many households awash with accumulated rubbish this week from mounds of Easter egg packaging to empty plastic and glass bottles, it is time for politicians and the Irish public to take a serious look at recycling.

The sudden conversion of right-wing British Tory environment secretary Michael Gove to a detailed national policy of recycling has exposed the lack of action or even serious thought about the subject in this country.

Less than two decades ago we were one of the world leaders in facing up to the scourge of unwanted plastic bags blowing in the wind up and down every Irish street and littering the countryside.

The introduction of a plastic bag levy in 2002 by then minister for the environment Noel Dempsey had a dramatic impact on the amount of unwanted plastic leading to a 90 per cent drop in the use of plastic bags and generating millions for a fund supporting environmental projects.

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The important point about the levy was that it was pitched high enough to be a serious disincentive to using plastic bags, and encouraged people to bring their own bags to shops. The levy now stands at 22 cent a bag, and the evidence of its success is obvious.

The problem is that no serious initiative to deal with the plastic menace has taken place since 2002. Other countries have copied the Irish initiative and gone on to develop a variety of schemes to promote the recycling of plastic, but we have done nothing despite the mounting evidence of plastic pollution on land and sea.

Disturbing evidence of the scale of the problem was revealed along the Dublin coast after the strong easterly gales that accompanied the cold snap at the beginning of March. When the storm abated mounds of plastic bottles and other plastic debris were thrown up at points around Dublin Bay.

Microbeads

Meanwhile we have had a number of scientific studies which have revealed the huge scale of the damage plastic is doing in the world’s oceans. This comes in many forms from bottles to fishing nets, and to the microbeads which are being ingested by many forms of marine life.

So what can be done?

A decisive move to deal with plastic pollution might have some mitigating impact on our likely failure to meet our climate-change targets in the years ahead

A start can be made with the introduction of a national refund scheme for plastic bottles. This would involve a stiff charge per plastic bottle of up to €1 and a refund of that charge when the bottle is returned for recycling.

Deposit return schemes for plastic, glass and cans are in operation in 38 countries. In Germany such a scheme was introduced in 2003, and now it is estimated that 99 per cent of plastic bottles are recycled.

The fees for the returned bottles or cans depend on the initial fee and the size of the bottle, and many countries use reverse vending machines for automatic reimbursement. These machines also cut down on the work required by retailers to make the system function.

When Gove announced his plan to implement such a scheme in England a few weeks ago, figures were produced which showed that 700,000 plastic bottles were thrown away as litter in the country every day.

Consultation

The devolved government in Scotland has already announced plans to start developing recycling scheme there, but a detailed consultation process is required in England, and it will need the major retailers and the drinks companies to come on board to make it work.

Given the success of a similar scheme in Germany and in Scandinavian countries there is no reason why it will not work in the UK or in Ireland. Objections from drinks companies and supermarkets should not be allowed to stand in the way of a reform that is clearly in the public interest.

As far as this country is concerned, a decisive move to deal with plastic pollution might have some mitigating impact on our likely failure to meet our climate-change targets in the years ahead.

On the evidence to date we are going to find it difficult, if not impossible, to meet the target of an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and could face serious financial sanctions as a result.

At the time the targets were agreed almost a decade ago senior officials felt they were far too ambitions and could limit this country’s growth prospects, but with the Green Party in government there was political pressure to aim high.

Contradiction

One of the problems is that there is an inherent contradiction between the Government’s encouragement of increased agricultural production to provide jobs and exports, and the emissions targets which require moves to smaller and more sustainable production.

Farming accounts for about a third of national emissions, and there is probably more room for manoeuvre to cut emissions in other areas like electricity generation and transport, but not enough progress has been made there either.

That is why it would make sense both environmentally and politically to do something serious about plastic. It is something that can be easily done, as other countries have shown, and it might demonstrate that we do actually care about the environment.