Ms Mindy O'Brien:

Yes. We were talking about litter, and I just want to let the committee know that Coastwatch, an environmental charity, has just come up with its recent survey of beaches. Its members track all the litter on the beach, and what they found in 2017 is that the largest constituent of litter on the beach was plastic bottles. They found more than 8,800 bottles. They tested 538 areas. The next largest constituent was plastic lids, followed by metal cans. Those are the top three litter items on the beaches, which contradicts some of the comments made today. There are many bottles littering the countryside.

As for the environment, we have support outside the gates of the Houses today. We have signatures from 8,000 people and we have received 3,000 signatures to support the deposit refund scheme in the past four days. Thirty Tidy Towns groups have also lent their support for the Bill. They are at the coalface of seeing all this pollution and litter on the ground. They see plastic bottles and disposable cups. They are there and they see it so they support the Bill. I do not think they publicly support many pieces of legislation.

Compostable coffee cups are better than the existing coffee cups. The problem I see is that if we do not have the good infrastructure to collect them, they will just go to be burnt like any other waste. If one wants to have them composted, one must send them to a composting facility. That means separate collection.