Refilling plastic bottles is better than using the new deposit return scheme machines, Green Party Minister Ossian Smyth has said.
The scheme – which began on February 1st 2024 – causes most plastic bottles and cans to have an additional charge added to them upon purchase, which can then be refunded to the customer if the empty item is returned and recycled at one of the designated machines around the country.
Speaking during an Oireachtas committee meeting on the environment today, Green Party Minister of State for the Circular Economy, Ossian Smyth, said the scheme was needed because “not enough of our bottles and cans are being recycled.”
“By adding a value to them, it becomes much harder to walk past a bottle or a can on the ground because they are money,” he said.
“I went to the supermarket and did my own first large-scale recycling after keeping a couple of bags in the kitchen. Along the way, I picked up three cans. That was on a short walk. The whole mindset around this type of waste, which relates to single-use drinks containers, is going to change and is changing.”
Smyth also said the volume of bottles and cans being recycled was “increasingly significantly all the time”, going from 500,000 items a few weeks ago, to 2 million items on Monday alone.
However, the controversial new policy has led some to voice frustrations, with many reports of local machines being out of order when individuals attempt to utilise them around the country.
Speaking during the same meeting, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said that the public’s “frustrations” with the scheme were coming up on doorsteps when canvassing.
“People are very frustrated, because they arrive back to the shop with their bags full of bottles, having perhaps travelled on the bus rather than in a car, and the machine is broken when they are also meant to pick up shopping,” he said, adding: “It is understandably frustrating.”
Murphy also said that the scheme fails to deal with “the fundamental issue”, which he said is that “we need to stop single-use plastics”.
“To shred the bottles and turn them back into bottles requires the use of a great deal of energy involving carbon emissions that could be used for something socially useful,” he said.
“The issue is that we need to get away from single-use plastics.”
Minister Smyth said he “substantially agreed” with this point.
“Reuse is better than recycling,” he said.
“If we can persuade people to refill plastic bottles with water, that is better than persuading them to bring back the bottles in the first place.
“For example, the sports clubs, GAA clubs and football clubs informed me that they could have reverse vending machines. They could, but even better than that would be that they encourage children to refill their bottles every day when they are at the club rather than bringing a pallet-full of plastic bottles individually for each person.”
During the same discussion, Fianna Fáil TD Christopher O’Sullivan said that he “welcomed” the scheme, adding that some people were against the idea from the start and had hoped it would fail.
“People seemed to be queuing up to knock it, just wishing and hoping it would not be a success, and many seemed far too overjoyed by the initial teething problems,” he said.
“Its success has been great to see, though. My understanding is that the success rate when segregating recyclables in this way is much higher.”
However, he acknowledged that the scheme “is not without its issues”.
“I am not looking for praise, but I wish to give an example of what can happen,” he said.
“I filled my first bag with plastic bottles and a few cans and eagerly brought it to the supermarket. I was excited about using the scheme for the first time, only to arrive at the machine and for it to tell me it was out of printing paper. I had to pause my first use of the scheme.”
The TD said it was “frustrating”, but that when he finally got to use the machine he was “overjoyed”.
“It was a bit frustrating, but I was not going to take to X like others had done. I was successful on my second go and got €2 off the cost of my shopping,” he said.
“I was overjoyed. There was a sense of success.”