Mary Henry (Independent)

I thank Senator O'Toole for sharing time with me.

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, to the House for these important statements. His figures on the improvement in recycling and reuse in this country were very encouraging.

The first issue I wish to address is packaging waste. We are not making enough effort to reduce the amount of packaging around goods. Considerable quantities of goods are imported, but we also produce goods ourselves, and not much effort is being put into reducing the packaging around them. Unfortunately, packaging helps to sell goods, and that is among the reasons that so many firms are reluctant to deal with the issue.

When this House passed legislation on packaging, I thought that in the case of large items such as refrigerators, washing machines, and cookers, the shop would be obliged to take their packaging away again when they were delivered to people's houses. The packaging in question is cardboard and, worse still, polystyrene, but I have discovered that the onus is on the householder to bring the packaging back to the shop. Perhaps that might be changed, since it is much more difficult to get people to gather all the packaging together — particularly the polystyrene, which disintegrates so easily — and bring it back to the shop than to have those delivering it take it straight back. I was under a misapprehension when the legislation was passed, since I assumed that to be the case.

There has been a great increase in the number of motor vehicles in this country and at the same time a drop in the recycling of tyres. The result has been a build-up of scrap tyres. I have some knowledge of and interest in the area, and they cannot all be put on silage pits around the country. Many are dumped, sometimes in watercourses, with very serious effects on the quality of water in the area.

It is important we try to ensure that a facility be established to deal with such scrap tyres. There was one, but unfortunately if suffered a serious fire, so that I gather it is out of action. Tyres must be reduced so that the valuable metal in them can be removed, sold and reused. Whatever rubber remains can be cut up to various sizes. It is good to put such rubber into roads, since it reduces the noise from traffic. We must consider this area as soon as possible. One notices tyres in the most inappropriate places, particularly on farms and in watercourses.

On the question of incineration, Senator O'Toole has rightly addressed the disposal of residual waste, which is a serious issue, since it can have a very undesirable component. To date, we have exported much of it, but we may not be allowed to do so for much longer. The one problem I always see with incineration is that it encourages neither reuse nor recycling. I read about the proposed incinerator in Poolbeg, which is near where I live. People are concerned that there may not be enough waste in the area to keep it in operation, so that it may be necessary to import waste from outside the area to make it economic. That would be very unfortunate, since there would be a great increase in the volume of traffic locally, particularly of heavy vehicles in an urban area.

Being able to feed incinerators is a problem, and we must ask ourselves whether it is really what we want. It would currently be better to concentrate on reducing, recycling and reusing, and I am delighted to see that we have made such progress in those areas.