Ms Mindy O'Brien:

We have been campaigning for a DRS for the past 20 years and it is essential for two reasons. First, it gives people a financial incentive to bring their bottles and cans back. Second, those products come in a clean stream. The Deputy was talking about contamination but when it comes in a clean stream it is much easier to recycle. I was at the Shabra recycling facility in Monaghan. It takes a lot of the plastics from Panda Waste and Thorntons Recycling and makes it into plastic pellets. I went up there to look at its processes. All the stuff goes to plants and goes through all the different permutations to separate all our green bin waste and it is baled up and sent up there. There is about 30% contamination in our green bins and it goes up there but it still has about 15% contamination because when they compact the things together the plastic goes into some aluminium or steel and they cannot separate it so that has to go out. If those items can be collected separately it is a much better way to recycle. We have to reach a 90% collection target for plastic bottles under the single use plastic directive. That target is there and that is the only way we will reach it. Additionally, under the single use plastic directive there is a requirement for beverage companies to have 30% recycled content in their bottles. They are trying to figure out where they can get clean recycled PET and they get it from countries with a DRS. The beverage companies that were so opposed to a DRS in the past are now supporting it because they need to get that recycled material. The only people who have been against it have been those in the waste industry because they see that they are losing some of the valuable material that is going into the bins as it will be siphoned off through the DRS. If we can simplify the packaging for other items that will raise the material value of other waste. That is the measure that compels producers to simplify the packaging.