The message of Barry Ward’s tweet – which showed one of the much-heralded new Recycle machines with a huge number of plastic bottles crammed into bags and scattered on the floor instead of being efficiently recycled – was rather unclear.
“Ah lads”, the Fine Gael Senator said, accompanied by a downcast emoji, but was he chiding the government for a scheme which seems to be faltering from the outset, or expressing his disappointment at the punters who had left their bottles around the machine?
The former seems unlikely, since senators don’t typically bite the hand that feeds them, so most responses to his tweet, which has been viewed 1.2 million times took serious issue with the notion that the people who brought bottles to be recycled were to blame.
Ah lads. 😔 pic.twitter.com/A6udcd09l6
— Barry Ward 🇮🇪 🇪🇺 (@barrymward) February 12, 2024
The much-trumpeted Deposit Return Scheme, introduced by Minister Eamon Ryan (who else), was given, as my colleague John McGuirk pointed out, a thoroughly uncritical welcome by most of the media. The Irish Times went so far as to say it could ‘reshape Ireland’.
Consumers were informed that they could expect to pay between 15 cents and 25 cents as a deposit when they bought a plastic bottle – which would be returned when the customer brought the empty bottle back to the shops.
Ciaran Foley, chief executive of Ireland’s Deposit Return Scheme“ said the plan – which was being adopted because Ireland was not meeting targets set by an EU-wide single-use plastics directive – would require “major behavioural change” which would take “a little bit of time for people to get used to”.
Given such lofty expectations perhaps it was inevitable that problems from the get-go would cause frustrations, especially given the entirely reasonable criticism from people who were already dutifully sorting their recyclables into their green bins and who pointed out that the new scheme would require additional petrol expense and time.
Journalist Michael Kelly found the system failed at the first hurdle as first Re-cycle machine in Tescos was broken while the second couldn’t read the bottles.
“Had to bin the lot, to think I used to recycle them at home,” he said, adding: “I walked to the supermarket with them on my back, and needed that bag to carry my groceries home.”
https://twitter.com/MichaelPTKelly/status/1756310629659378079
Responses to his tale, much like the plastic bottles in Ward’s photo, soon piled up.
“Irish town Athlone outside Dunnes stores. Both are out of order after just one week,” was one comment with a photo of the recycling machines, while another woman wrote:
“I took 22 back to the machine for the first time (all 22 I definitely paid the extra on and have receipts to prove it) and 5 were accepted! manager said it’s happening a lot and gave me an email address to complain to and I ended up just dumping them in my own recycling bin.”
There are also clearly teething problems with the system which were not well explained from the outset – such as a time lag where some products on the shelves do not have barcodes for return, but deposits are being charged at the till, which is understandably causing annoyance to consumers.
Some of this is undoubtedly because of poor planning (another government speciality) – the deposit charges began on Feb 1st for the public but Re-Turn says that a period up to 4 months is available for retailers (and one presumes, producers) to register new barcodes for the return scheme. That makes no sense.
Then there’s the cost of the re-cycling machine, a very significant outlay of €12,000 to be borne by the retailer, who can can avail of a handling fee of between 2.2c and 2.6c per container, but only, one imagines, if the darn machines work for the customer and the bottle is actually accepted on return.
And in addition to all that, the machines, which have cost millions to manufacture are not wheelchair friendly. How did no-one in all the planning around this initiative not think of that?
Of course, the additional charge to the shopping bills of already hard-pressed consumers is coming at a time when surging inflation has already caused a cost-of-living crisis, so any cracks in the system which means people are left short is a public relations disaster.
The Greens seem to think that, much like lettuce in window boxes, money simply grows on trees, and ordinary people can just go on paying carbon taxes and extra charges because in return they get the warm, cosy feeling that they’re helping the planet.
While this is clearly fine when your virtue signaling is being financed by the handsome salaries and expenses available to politicians and NGO executives, ordinary people who are already aghast at the never-ending rise in the cost of the weekly shop will likely find this additional deposit charge more than a little irksome, when it seems that there is only a diminishing chance of actually getting a refund.
And so to Senator Ward’s tweet and the very strong reaction to his ‘ah lads’ caption. Scanning the hundreds of comments and quotes, it was difficult to find many with any positive to say about the scheme.
“It’s just another tax of 25c for every plastic bottle. Nobody in authority actually cares whether the recycle/refund system works or not. It’s just another tax that is the main objective,” said actor Rory Cowan.
“This is the Green Party summed up in a picture – a very bad idea, nobody wants it and it’s costing a fortune,” wrote one woman, and there were plenty of similar comments.
Not that those on X were letting Ward’s own party off the hook: “I have huge respect for Fine Gael highlighting their own failure here publically on Twitter. Well done,” was one tweet, while another wrote: “Government introduce a system that isn’t fully functional to a population that aren’t fully informed about it. When it inevitably doesn’t work, they blame the electorate”.
And there were plenty reminders of the disastrous e-voting machines which cost €54 million and were eventually sold as scrap metal.
https://twitter.com/PathsToFreedom/status/1757539805758431381
Of course, supporters of the scheme point out that similar initiatives have worked well in other countries and that problems can be sorted in the long term.
But as Gript Editor, John McGuirk, pointed out, the photo said more about the government than the electorate.
Rarely has a photograph more accurately depicted the governance of a nation. https://t.co/BDpbGBBKKk
— John McGuirk (@john_mcguirk) February 13, 2024