Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Last July, with the single-use plastics directive, ten of the most common single-use plastic items that wash up on beaches, including plastic knives, forks, plates and earbuds, were banned. That was done on an EU-wide basis. I went into a shop a week later to make sure they were not on the shelves and they were not, so these things actually work.

The deposit return scheme focuses on one particular type of plastic, namely, polyethylene terephthalate, known as PET, which is the clear plastic used for bottles but it can be expanded to other types. When we get this working for PET and aluminium, I will certainly be looking at other types of plastics including high density polyethylene, HDPE, for example, which is used to make milk cartons.

Better than recycling is avoiding the use of these materials altogether. In some major supermarkets it is now possible to refill bottles with orange juice, for example, and some smaller producers have no packaging whatsoever. There are some specialist shops that allow customers to bring their own packaging to be refilled and I would like to see that becoming the norm in supermarkets too. Yesterday I was invited to visit a café on Pearse Street called Bread, which has eliminated the use of disposable cups already, off its own bat. The café is making money out of it because it makes sense for businesses not to be paying for waste to be removed.

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