Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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There are. The Deputy mentioned the health sector, for a start, in regard to aprons and so on. There is a tradition or culture in the health sector of treating medical waste very carefully, putting patient safety first and effectively incinerating everything. Until recently there was an incinerator in every Irish hospital with a chimney. Every type of waste went into the incinerator and was burnt. There is a big cultural challenge to get past that. As an example of the success stories in hospitals, the use of mattresses has changed dramatically. There was a period where mattresses had a very short shelf life, were made of foam and were incinerated after a few months. The same was happening in prisons. In every prison or hospital in Ireland there were stacks of mattresses that had a very short shelf life. The hospitals looked at this. They were approached by various circular economy businesses and came up with a more sustainable approach to their mattresses.

The Deputy mentioned the case of aprons. I met one of the O’Riordans, I do not recall whether it was Mary or her cousin-----