Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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If the Senator likes I will go through some of it. The scheme is currently achieving a 95% collection rate. It is estimated that between 3,000 tonnes and 4,000 tonnes of farm plastic waste is not collected by the scheme annually. This includes an estimate for unlevied product placed on the market. In terms of what happens to this waste, IFFPG can only speculate that a portion of it is disposed into landfill, small volumes are recycled via household recycling bins, some may be stockpiled on farms and some may be delivered to one or two private collectors who may still be accepting waste. There is no evidence that there is a problem with the illegal management of the waste, with neither the WERLAs nor the local authorities reporting it as an issue. It should be noted that IFFPG can quite accurately quantify in aggregate terms how much farm plastic waste is not being collected annually by the scheme. It has neither the authority nor the ability to identify farmers who are not currently recycling. This is because GDPR prevents the scheme from accessing other organisations' databases to identify such farmers.