John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes. Even there a bit of education is needed because apparently they are not great in every aspect of the garden but are suitable for particular plants.

Sometimes I think we are too late. A piecemeal manner of addressing this will not work. If you want to see the appetite for plastic, go into your supermarket. The most obscene example of plastic use is on airlines. When you order a cup of tea and a bun, you are given a plastic cup, a plastic spoon, plastic sachets of sugar, a plastic holder for the milk, plastic around the bag, a plastic bag to dispose of the plastic to be collected and that is disposed of in another plastic bag that the cabin crew push around. The amount of plastic peddled to consumers on airlines is obscene.

I have a Bill that is almost completed and has been in gestation for quite a while. It is around waste recycling. I hope to publish it after Easter. It proposes to build on the voluntary efforts made by some supermarkets. I do not want to name them. They have large bays in the supermarket so people can dispose of unwanted plastic before bringing their shopping home. Some supermarkets and supermarket chains are taking big steps forward in relation to this. I was talking to someone from a new supermarket in my area and they are going to great lengths to restrict the amount of waste. We need to go a step further. My Bill intends to make this mandatory in supermarkets and shops of a particular size. Some of the legislation governing rehab talks about this. I should be able to dispose of unwanted wrapping, containers, covers or whatever in the shop. A classic example, in terms of paper, is the load of newspaper supplements which I do not want when I buy the newspaper and would like to be able to leave behind. Supermarkets are stopping at this phase; they are clapping themselves on the back and saying they are enabling people to leave wrappings and produce covers behind. I would like them to be able to examine whether packaging on some goods is left behind by customers in much bigger volumes than packaging on other goods. They should be able to contact manufacturers to say that customers do not seem to like the way they package their goods. That is the only way to create a chain of change. That Bill is coming forward after Easter.

The Minister of State should not be afraid to be radical. There is a huge appetite among the public. Plastic bottles will kill us all. They are killing marine life and ocean life. There is some evidence, which I am sure will grow and grow, that we are digesting it into our system. There is plastic in our system and God knows what damage that is doing to us.

See this speech in context