Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy details a range of measures that will be adopted to achieve optimum results in the area of plastics and packaging, which encompasses food and beverage containers. The over-riding objective is to ensure that, by 2030, all packaging placed on the Irish market is reusable or recyclable in an economically viable way. The plan sets out a level of ambition which will position Ireland as a frontrunner towards the attainment of EU packaging recycling targets.

In addition, the Single Use Plastics Directive requires that Member States take necessary measures to ensure separate collection for recycling. To that end, by 2025, Ireland must ensure the separate collection of 77% of plastic beverage bottles placed on the market (by weight), rising to 90% by 2029. In order to achieve this, I recently signed the Separate Collection (Deposit Return Scheme) Regulations 2021, to enable the establishment of a Deposit Return Scheme in Ireland, which will be introduced in Q3 2022. The Deposit Return Scheme will achieve the separate collection targets for PET plastic bottles set out in the Single Use Plastics Directive and the recycling targets for aluminium established in directives on packaging and packaging waste. While there are no targets set for the recycling of plastic beverage bottles, it is expected that the material collected by the Deposit Return Scheme will be of high quality, leading to increased recycling levels of this packaging type.

Consumption reduction is, of course, preferential to increased recycling and it is my intention to publish a suite of consumption reduction measures for single use plastic food containers and cups under Article 4 of the Single Use Plastics Directive, when the format for these measures is agreed at EU level.