Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this legislation in the House. This whole Circular Economy, Waste Management (Amendment) and Minerals Development (Amendment) Bill should be about ensuring a reduction of the usage of plastic in our economy. If the Minister of State looks to the wider European approach, they have taken a more macro approach. I am thinking of Italy and other countries, for example, that have looked at attempting to reduce the amount of plastic in the economy.

I accept the issue that was raised in this country previously by the plastic bag tax. At the time, it was principally a litter measure more so than a reduction of plastic measure. It worked very well. People were much more cautious about the purchase and usage of plastic bags. It changed people's mindset. For sure, there are many people who have issues around the paper cup and the way in which it contributes to litter throughout the country. I am not so sure that the approach in this Bill is necessarily the right way to go about it for a whole variety of reasons. Principally, the amount of plastic in a paper cup is so small. I think the Government is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut when the consequence of moving people away from a paper cup with a relatively small amount of plastic contained internally for food safety purposes is for it to potentially be replaced by a strong, heavy plastic cup.

I would put on the record that there is a facility my in constituency, namely, a company called Cup Print, that employs many people. However, that is not why I am making the case. I tend not to parish-pump on important stuff such as this. The reality is, we still have little plastic cups such as the one in front of the Minister of State. We are not proposing any major elimination of those. However, at the same time, we are proposing to try to eliminate the coffee cup.

The reality is the vast majority of paper coffee cups with a very minute amount of plastic are compostable. Plastic cups like the one in front of the Minister of State are not. I have spoken to other elements of the industry and the expectation is that if the Government bans or puts a significant levy on what we know to be the paper coffee cup, the huge coffee industry will pivot towards the use of a reusable plastic cup. We all have keep cups. I have a couple in the car. Some are metal and some are heavy plastic. I have been shown plastic cups that can be produced for 10 cent to 15 cent. The reality is, if we make the paper cup expensive by virtue of either a significant levy or attempt to ban it, it will be replaced. People will continue to drink coffee.

Notwithstanding all our best efforts to have a reusable cup with us, the vast majority of coffee is purchased as an impulse buy. There are statistics to that effect. On my way to Leinster House, on occasion I will drop into Carol’s coffee shop across road, namely, the Petite Café. Carol does a great service. I will take a paper cup. I will dispose of it appropriately and that is the right thing to do. However, if I do not have my keep cup with me and she provides me with a plastic cup, I will take that too. I think I am just typical of a lot of people.

I am very worried that what we are trying to do here, which is the right thing to do to eliminate the litter, may be creating a situation whereby we will end up producing much more plastic reusable cups. However, because they will be produced relatively cheaply and will be of relatively poor quality, they will be disposable. I am not suggesting they will all be littering the sides of the road; they may not. They just go back into the trash can. That is creating more of a demand for plastic.

The amendments that I will be more interested in are about addressing that issue. Perhaps it will be for rules and regulations the Government will bring forward at a later stage. We need to be very cautious in moving from the litter issue. Perhaps we need to have a broader view.

No different to most people in this House, to get head space, I walk or run. When I go outside any village, within two miles of the village, when the foliage drops in the autumn and remains gone for the winter, I see an amazing amount of litter, from vodka bottles to Coke cans to cigarette wrappers, which all have plastic attached. There are paper cups, but they rot away, while much of the other stuff does not. I am just concerned that perhaps from a departmental point of view, this might seem like a nice headline: “We banned the coffee cup because it is a blight on the landscape”. We need to look again entirely at the way we manage waste. The model we have at the minute encourages people to be careless about waste because there is a charge on it. Should we be looking at the collection of waste for free? I would have discussed with the Minister for Transport on occasion about the idea of free public transport as a method of getting people away from using their car or taking unnecessary journeys in the car. Sometimes one has to make a very big policy change in order to change behaviour. Regarding litter and from a litter perspective, we should be moving towards some kind of municipal facilities, such as we do with bottle banks and used clothing. We have to get there.

I talk regularly to my local authority about the lack of bins in some beauty spots. The standard response from the top down is, "But sure you cannot be putting bins there. There will be domestic waste put in or around them." We are looking at it backwards if we are trying to eliminate waste. I see it throughout County Clare. Too much waste is dumped at night on quiet roads, often in very beautiful areas where people like to walk, run and go for a scenic amenity. However, the waste is there.

I would encourage perhaps the Minister of State or people within the overall architecture of government to come forward with a strategy to address litter - a very comprehensive one that involves education and encourages people to dispose of goods in a way that is much more sympathetic to the natural beauty of the environment. That requires a free service in a certain number of areas. The vast majority of people will adhere to and pay for the collection of their waste. However, there needs to be some kind of a municipal facility where the State carries the burden for those who do not or do not want to do so. It is a huge blight and it is not just coffee cups. It is a problem.

If the Minister of State takes a walk in the autumn along the road from any village, he will see the extent and amount of litter. I think he will be surprised - perhaps he has seen it already – by the stuff that gets dumped with a much higher plastic content than what we are talking about. I know the volumes are large here, but it is the quantum of plastic. That is what the whole idea of this initiative was originally based around, that is, reducing the production of plastic, rather than the way it is discarded on the other end.We will debate the amendments, but I just wanted to set out my thoughts behind the matter. That is important.

As I said, a company in the Clare constituency employs many people. It is innovative and a good company. It has developed technologies relating to the production of paper cups, and it is changing materials all the time. It wants to be sympathetic to the environment and is trying to reduce its carbon footprint. It is doing that really well. If that were not the case, I would call the company out. It is working towards the future. Nevertheless, there is a potential hazard in what we are trying to do in that we might disrupt what the company is doing. The net effect would be that what we allow to develop behind it would have a far more negative impact on the environment than what is currently there.