Mr. Matthew Collins:

I thank the Chair and members for the invitation to participate in the detailed scrutiny of the Waste Reduction Bill 2017. It is reasonable to say that all of us broadly share concerns about waste. We are all aware of incidents of illegal dumping or fly-tipping locations in parts of rural Ireland or streets in our towns and cities. Similarly, we are gravely concerned that over one million tonnes of food waste is disposed of each year in Ireland, around one third of which comes from households. Every household in Ireland is responsible for one tonne of food waste and the cost per household varies between €400 and €1,000 per year. We may have different views on which issue should be prioritised, as well as the best way to tackle those issues.

The Minister, Deputy Naughten, has welcomed the Waste Reduction Bill introduced by Deputy Ryan, along with a number of other bills addressing this issue. However, he asked for the Bill to be referred to the committee for detailed scrutiny because he has some concerns around the provisions. I would like to take the opportunity to outline some of those concerns. The Bill suggests two approaches for dealing with single use plastics: a ban on non-compostable plastic cups, glasses and tableware; and the introduction of a deposit and return scheme for drinks containers. It should be noted by the committee that from a national and EU legislative perspective, plastic cups, glasses and drinks containers are packaging and consequently are subject to regulation by the European Union (Packaging) Regulations 2014 - SI 282/2014 - and the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 94/62/EU.

Before dealing with the specifics of the Deputy’s two proposals, it is useful to put them into Ireland's policy context. Our national approach to date for dealing with waste packaging has been based around the extended producer responsibility, EPR, principle as set out in European legislation. EPR seeks to ensure that the producer of a product bears a significant proportion of the cost of dealing with the waste management of the product they supply. In Ireland, this has been done very effectively through a producer-funded compliance scheme operated by Repak. Similar schemes operate in other waste streams such as waste electronic and electrical goods, batteries, farm plastics and, most recently, end-of-life vehicles and tyres. In a review of EPR schemes carried out in 2014 for the Department, it was concluded that Ireland has achieved great success in recent years in recovering and recycling packaging waste and one of the key reasons for that success was the shared responsibility approach to packaging waste. In its most recent bulletin on waste packaging statistics for Ireland, the EPA found that Ireland met and exceeded all EU targets for recovery and recycling. Of the estimated almost 980,000 tonnes of packaging waste generated in 2015, some 91% was recovered and the majority of that was recycled.

As regards the provision requiring the Minister to ban disposable, non-compostable plastic cups and glasses, the Minister has requested the committee to scrutinise this part of the Bill as it is his understanding that such a ban may be in contravention of Article 18 of the EU Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste, which states: “Member States shall not impede the placing on the market of their territory of packaging which satisfies the provisions of this Directive." In considering this proposal, the committee may be interested to know that France tried to introduce a ban similar to that proposed, which is supposed to come into effect in 2020. The original idea when the law was adopted was to cover all single-use plastic cups, glasses and plates. However, the Commission pointed out that in some circumstances those items were considered as packaging when sold full with food or drink. This meant that the scope has been refined in France to all tableware falling out of the scope of the packaging and packaging waste directive. In practice, the result is that the ban only concerns packages of empty plastic tableware that one would buy at the supermarket and became known as the "picnic tax”. The Minister also had concerns that the proposed ban needed to be scrutinised to consider whether it is in breach of the free movement provisions of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

In recommending scrutiny of the legislation to the committee, the Minister suggested that a levy might be a better approach in light of these reasons. The plastic bag levy has worked very well in terms of behavioural change and this might be a possible approach to limit the volume of single-use containers being used. Environmental levies are not about revenue generation but are designed to encourage behavioural change and this might be an excellent way to deal with the issues raised. The committee may like to consider that further.

As I mentioned, packaging in Ireland is subject to a successful producer compliance scheme. As part of the review of the scheme in 2014, a wider examination of issues was undertaken and consideration was given to the introduction of a bring-back scheme for waste. The review report did not recommend its introduction because it concluded that to establish such a scheme was inappropriate in view of the operation of the existing packaging scheme. On Second Stage of the Bill in the Dáil, the Minister indicated that although he was not convinced of the merits of introducing a deposit and return scheme in Ireland for the reasons outlined, he was not averse to considering a review, similar to that under way in Scotland. The ongoing work in Scotland is of particular interest given that it currently operates a producer responsibility scheme. A feasibility study based on practice overseas, previous relevant studies, and stakeholder consultations identified how a scheme could work in Scotland and the possible set-up and administration costs involved. It gave a total estimated cost of a deposit and return scheme of £78 million sterling or about €88 million. With such significant suggested costs, any scrutiny of this proposal would, at a minimum, need to consider how much the installation and running of a deposit and return scheme would cost; how it should operate; who should operate it; what steps would be needed to provide the necessary infrastructure; what the likely benefits would be; and how it could be made compatible with our existing initiatives.