Mr. Paul Kelly:

From a food and drink perspective, consumer safety is the overriding objective of food and beverage producers, and packaging ensures effective communication to consumers and its safe use and handling. Because of effective packaging processes, food wastage rates at pre-consumption point are between 2% and 4% in industrialised countries. This compares with 50% in developing countries.

The mandating of a deposit-and-return scheme for sealed beverage containers must be considered in the context of our existing waste packaging, collection and recycling in Ireland, called Repak. In 2016, beverage manufacturers paid €6.6 million to Repak, which is close to 25% of its revenue.

Beverage manufacturers paid €6.6 million to Repak in 2016, close to 25% of Repak revenues. The impact of this financial commitment is evidence that before industry began funding Repak, 94% of all packaging went to landfill and now 93% of all packaging is recycled and recovered, according to the EPA. Placing a deposit return scheme directly on top of our existing scheme would put this progress at risk.

The packaging targeted by the Bill makes up just 4.5% of litter, according to the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. Tackling litter louts requires awareness programmes and enforcement of the Litter Act.

Ireland’s waste packaging collection and recycling scheme is built on the principle of shared responsibility. This shared cost approach is one where business, waste collectors and householders share the cost of segregated packaging waste collections. This recognises the obligation on collectors to collect waste from households, with householders contributing towards the provision of a service under the principle of polluter pays and business contributing to the additional costs of collecting packaging waste for recycling separately from other waste. Food Drink Ireland believes that this should continue to be the case to build on our recycling rates.