Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action debate -
Tuesday, 30 Apr 2024

Circular Economy: Discussion

An Cathaoirleach

I have received apologies from Senator Higgins.

The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the current state of play in regard to the circular economy following on from the signing into law of the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022. On behalf of the committee, I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, and his officials to the meeting.

Before we begin I will read out the note on privilege. I remind witnesses of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him or her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that may be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. If their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, I will direct them to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against any person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I remind members that they are only allowed to participate in the meeting if they are physically located in the Leinster House complex. In this regard, I ask those members who are joining us remotely to confirm that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus prior to making their contributions.

I call on the Minister of State to make his opening statement.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications (Deputy Ossian Smyth)

I thank the Chairperson and members for inviting me to this meeting to discuss the current state of play in respect of the circular economy following on from the signing into law of the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act in 2022.

In line with the evolution of EU and UN environmental policy, the waste action plan for a circular economy was published in September 2020. The first circular economy strategy and the circular economy programme were published in November 2021. In July 2022, the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act completed its passage through the Oireachtas. Over the past two years we have put in place the necessary policy and regulatory framework required for a successful circular transition. The national waste management plan for a circular economy, which was published last month, further enhances the regulatory framework by setting out the specific targets and actions which need to be taken over the period 2024 to 2030 to achieve this transition. Now that the policy and regulatory framework is in place, I intend to build on that momentum.

Ireland’s first national food waste prevention roadmap is a key step in steering our efforts towards achieving the goal of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030.

This roadmap addresses a number of key areas that we need to develop in order to put us on the right trajectory to reduce food waste in a meaningful and robust way. It sets out the context of food waste in Ireland, informed by the latest available data, and sets out priority actions to bring the focus on food waste prevention across key sectors in the food supply chain together in a coherent manner.

The new circular economy fund was established last July. It signals a clear commitment to further integration of circular economy principles in practice. My Department has recently taken a number of very significant steps to help drive the necessary improvements to our waste segregation practices which will form a major part of our efforts to meet forthcoming EU waste recycling targets. In July 2023 incentivised waste collection in the commercial sector was introduced, and since January of this year all waste collection service providers are obliged to provide all households with a separate collection for biowaste, or what is known as a brown bin. In September 2023 I introduced a levy of €10 for every tonne of municipal waste recovered in Ireland or exported abroad for recovery. I also announced a corresponding increase in the existing landfill levy to €85 per tonne. These levies will encourage more recycling and re-use, and greater efforts to segregate waste at source.

Construction waste is the fastest growing waste stream, accounting for over half of the total waste currently being generated. Given that substantial volumes of this weight are potentially preventable, re-usable or recyclable it presents a significant opportunity for us to reduce our circularity gap. The recovery levy does not currently apply to the recovery of construction and demolition material and therefore the challenges we face in terms of Ireland’s overall waste performance and the achievement of EU targets, our circularity gap and the huge resource opportunity that is being lost in the construction sector, and our extremely constrained capacity situation with respect to municipal solid waste are such that the continued application of levy exemption for construction and demolition waste is neither tenable nor sustainable.

The publication of the EPA’s national by-product criteria for greenfield soil and stone, and for site-won asphalt, aids the prevention of construction and demolition material becoming waste in the first instance, diverting material from incineration. In this regard, my Department is looking to remove the exemption for recovering and landfilling construction and demolition waste effective from 1 September. My officials are working closely with the National Waste Collection Permit Office, NWCPO, on preparing local government for this change and continue to consult with industry.

In addition, my Department commissioned a study to examine the continued relevance of existing exemptions to the landfill levy with a view to improving our waste performance and reducing our circularity gap. A levy on the disposal of waste has been in place since 2002 to divert salvageable material away from landfills. However, last year almost 90% of landfilled waste was exempt from this disposal levy. Therefore, the landfill levy regulations do not properly incentivise waste prevention or segregation due to a wide range of exemptions. The study has called for the landfill levy to move in step with the new waste recovery levy, with the proposed recommendations under consideration by my officials in consultation with stakeholders.

I am also conscious of the need to ensure transparency in waste collection pricing structures. In line with commitments given in A Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy, my officials are currently working with the NWCPO to examine whether fair and transparent pricing is consistent in the market and how that information is disclosed to customers. My officials are also working with the NWCPO to carry out a study on incentivised charging structures in the waste collection market. This study will examine what, if any, improvements are needed to ensure that waste collection systems are fully incentivising waste prevention and improved source segregation practices.

Earlier this month I published the green public procurement strategy and action plan, Buying Greener. This will play a key role in driving the implementation of green and circular procurement practices across the public sector. Key areas of focus in the green public procurement strategy and action plan include measures to progress green public procurement implementation in the public sector, green public procurement monitoring and reporting, training and awareness, and further development of national green public procurement guidance and criteria. In addition, the strategy sets out how we will undertake market engagement, avail of research and innovation, and EU and international initiatives on green public procurement.

We have just seen the successful introduction of Ireland’s deposit return scheme for plastic bottles and aluminium and steel cans. This is the final step in this very exciting project, which has been a major undertaking for the beverage industry, retailers and the general public as well, through the DRS company Re-turn. This is the first such system across Britain and Ireland and is an example of how we can all embrace circularity in our everyday lives.

It is becoming increasingly clear the public is also embracing the concept. Last Saturday was our most prolific day yet. We had 806,000 transactions and over 2.3 million containers were returned. This was part of a steady and significant increase over the past number of weeks. To date, over 70.6 million empty containers have been returned by customers and the value of deposits paid out to customers has been €12.3 million. There were always going to be challenges associated with introducing the scheme and these are being managed. Re-turn is working proactively on an improvement programme with retailers and reverse vending machine, RVM, suppliers, and RVM availability is getting better as a result. Work is also ongoing with the National Disability Authority to ensure fit-for-purpose consultation with relevant parties.

Since the enactment of the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022, I have also continued to work closely with the local authority sector to give it the additional enforcement tools needed to be better able to encourage people to do the right thing with their waste and to detect, and, where necessary, prosecute those who continue to harm their local environment through littering and illegal dumping. In this regard, I am pleased to confirm that all sections of the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 relating to the use of CCTV and other mobile recording devices have now been fully commenced. This means local authorities are now free to put the necessary procedures in place to allow for the GDPR-compliant use of these technologies to help combat the scourge of littering and illegal dumping.

My Department also continues to provide significant annual financial support to local authority efforts to tackle litter and unauthorised waste activities through the anti-litter and anti-graffiti awareness grant scheme, ALAGS, the anti-dumping initiative, ADI, the waste enforcement measures grant scheme and through funding the three waste enforcement regional lead authorities, WERLAs. In 2024 alone, my Department has allocated approximately €15 million to these measures.

Textiles is also a priority policy area for my Department to tackle the environmental degradation caused by this material stream and realise our circular economy ambitions. In global terms, we have come to recognise more recently how significant an impact textiles have on our environment, especially in terms of carbon emissions and water use. The recent waste characterisation survey showed that 9% of household waste bin consists of textiles, so this is clearly a problem. Recent research indicates that textile waste is estimated to be 170,000 tonnes per year, which equates to 35 kg per person per year, a quite staggering amount.

The Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 recognises textiles as a priority sector and provides that the next whole circular economy strategy, due at the end of this year, will include targets for more sustainable production and consumption of textiles in Ireland. In 2022, I established the textiles advisory group that brought together relevant expertise from industry, the community and regulatory bodies. Building on the work of this group, alongside policy and legislative developments at EU level, my Department will be preparing a national policy statement on textiles and a circular economy roadmap for textiles later this year.

The Department's plans for increased circularity in textiles are being informed by policy developments at EU level. In particular, the European Commission published its proposal for targeted amendments to the waste framework directive in July 2023 with respect to food waste and textiles. This proposal aims to introduce a mandatory, EU-wide extended producer responsibility scheme for textile waste to support the EU requirement to have a separate collection of textiles in place by 2025 in line with the waste hierarchy. Negotiations on this proposal started in January of this year and my Department is actively involved in the discussions to progress this draft legislation that will support circularity in textiles.

Work is continuing on the next iteration of the circular economy strategy. It will have a statutory basis and, in line with the requirements under the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022, will include targets for specified sectors, delivering on the potential to make significant contributions to the circular transition. To inform the strategy, a circularity gap report is being prepared. This is required, as in 2019 Ireland’s circular material use rate was the second worst in the EU at 1.6%, compared to an EU average of 11.9%. The purpose of this project is to enable us to better understand the levers for change in moving to a circular economy and the benefits these levers could bring based on solid analysis.

We need to size Ireland’s circularity gap to understand further how raw materials are processed and assembled to become the products that address the country’s needs. Understanding what happens at the end-of-use stage sheds light on the accumulation of materials in products, goods and the built environment around us. Furthermore, it reveals the extent to which Ireland currently achieves the recycling of resources back into the economy to provide a clear starting point to identify where different sectors and supply chains should focus their strategies going forward to deliver the biggest results in terms of reducing environmental impacts and increasing secondary material use ultimately narrowing our circularity gap.

I am committed to the introduction of a new regulatory system for end-of-waste products and by-products. End of waste is one of the pivotal issues for our circular economy ambition and is a key area for industry. The publication of a circular guidance for the construction sector, as part of the work of the construction sector group, is also a priority. The Department is in the process of finalising legislation to streamline the EPA licensing regime with a view to simplifying the process while also providing time-bound certainty to facilitate appropriate growth and economic development. We have made significant progress in recent years but we must continue to harness that momentum if we are to effect real change. Ireland’s ambition is to be an EU and global leader in the transition to a circular economy, a transition that will have positive environmental, economic and social impacts for everyone.

A transition to a circular economy offers the possibility of an alternative future, a sustainable future, and is a fundamental step towards achieving our climate targets. Through increased awareness, better informed consumption decisions and appropriate incentives, Ireland can become a leader in this field, delivering benefits in all sectors of society. We cannot continue to consume things without thinking about where the resources to make those things come from and how the waste from those products will be disposed of. We cannot continue to make, use and just throw away. A circular economy offers an alternative, and I look forward to continuing to work with this committee to realise it.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank the Minister of State. I congratulate him and the Department on the efforts they have made in recent years, not only in getting the circular economy Act across the line nearly two years ago but also in the subsequent plans and strategies that have emerged, which are very significant and are a credit to their dedication to this issue. People of my age and older will agree the level of visible waste on our streets and in our countryside has been greatly reduced in recent years and decades, although I accept that is not the full picture when it comes to the circular economy. In acknowledging the Minister of State's work, I acknowledge the work of previous Governments as well. We have been moving in the right direction and our colleague Deputy Bruton certainly played a role as Minister for the environment. We have to go in the right direction, given this is such an important area for all kinds of reasons, not least the environmental one.

There has been some very good news about the hot school meals programme and there was an article in today's edition of The Irish Times about it. It is broadly welcomed and it is a very positive development. It does not relate to the Minister of State's Department but it does relate to a significant one, namely, the Department of Education. There are going to be vast benefits for children and, ultimately, for society with the roll-out of the scheme, but there is a concern the criteria are not tight enough such that we may generate unnecessary food and packaging waste with that, and those concerns were alluded to in The Irish Times article this morning. What is in the strategies, plans and constraints the circular economy Act puts on the Government to ensure there will be that tightening of the criteria such that we will not generate more food and packaging waste?

My second question relates to disposable vapes. They are a scourge on our environment, and they are prevalent. What is in the strategies to ensure there will be an end to disposable vapes? They are not a positive development of recent years for many reasons but I think there is power, under the circular economy Act, to address that challenge.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I thank the Cathaoirleach for acknowledging the progress made on the circular economy and the contributions of my predecessor, who laid much of the groundwork for what I have done.

I will start with the hot school meals. The hot school meals programme is a very good thing. It is widely acknowledged to be a positive thing that children can have hot meals at school, particularly in winter. However, since the programme was launched, concerns have been raised about the nutritional value of the food provided and the use of single-use materials and packaging to deliver the food. I refer particularly to concerns recently raised in the media. Schools are clearly facing challenges in that they may not have commercial kitchens. It is difficult for them to carry out any kind of food processing or kitchen activity, even reheating, so the food is delivered in such a way as to allow it to be unpacked with everything then thrown away afterwards.

I met with schoolchildren from a number of primary schools in Cabra recently. They described to me their problems with the scheme. They pointed out that they got a plastic bottle of water with each meal so each child could be getting two plastic bottles a day. Meanwhile, the drinking fountains in the school were not working. That is obviously an issue. They also pointed out that the portion sizes were uniform regardless of whether food was being served to a five-year-old or a 12-year-old. That is obviously also an issue. It is much better that the scheme is there than not there but we must now take the experience, criticisms and suggestions of the users, the children, to make the scheme better. They were full of suggestions. I will talk to the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, and her Department about this. They should see whether the guidelines for the scheme can be improved.

Some schools are not using as much single-use packaging as others. The scheme is not uniform. Like many Department of Education schemes, there is a good deal of independence in the way the scheme is administered. Schools are given a degree of independence in choosing how they spend the money and where they obtain the food. There probably is best practice there.

The Deputy asked about Government guidelines in this area. The Government has new green procurement guidelines and an action plan. There is a section on food procurement. Although it was very recently published and will not apply to existing contracts, there is a new school year coming up. While I do not want to give me and my Department extra work, it would be a good idea for me to co-ordinate with the Department of Education on producing a simple and accessible guide for schools as to how to procure their hot school meals in a way that is good for the environment and does not result in a lot of food waste. I also heard from the children that as much as 50% of the food is not being eaten in some schools. Of course, all parents will be used to lunch boxes coming back with uneaten sandwiches, so uneaten food is not a new thing with children. However, there is obviously an issue if the food is not being eaten in this instance. It was suggested that there should be different portion sizes for different ages of children. That is what I will say on hot school meals.

In the context of disposable vapes, I have no problem with the idea of people using vaping to get away from a cigarette addiction. The problem really began to occur about three years ago, during the pandemic, when a new type of vape that had everything in one and that was not refillable, reusable or rechargeable became popular. Rather than having a cartridge and a rechargeable battery, you simply used the vape for a day or two and then threw it away. The result is tens of millions of vapes ending up in the countryside as litter. They contain lithium ion batteries and electronics. It is obviously wrong that this should happen. They are also extremely popular with teenagers. There has been an increase in nicotine addiction. Up to now, a vape had been something you used to get away from cigarettes.

Now, it is clearly a gateway to smoking cigarettes. The amount of money being made out of this is vast. Companies are making hundreds of millions of euro per year in a market that did not exist four years ago. I have had significant legal engagement to see what I can do and am now assured that I can proceed on this matter. I am proposing to ban disposable vapes. I will shortly send a notification to the EU, which will give it a chance to say whether such a proposal is compatible with the Single Market. My belief is that it will be.

Disposable vapes are not the only issue. Importantly, the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, has legislated so that vapes can only be sold to over-18s. His legislation also allows for restricting the types of outlet at which vapes can be sold, presumably to the same outlets where cigarettes are sold. This will take us away from vapes being sold in every second-hand laptop shop and so on. He has other legislation in the works to ban flavours for vapes, which I presume is one of the reasons minors are using vapes so much.

I have visited the KMK Metals Recycling facility in Offaly, where all of the batteries and vapes in the country are processed and sent over to Germany to be successfully looked after. I have spoken to the manufacturers and importers of these vapes, I have spoken to others in the industry and I have carried out public consultation. I have done all of the work for this and we are now going to proceed to a ban on disposable vapes.

An Cathaoirleach

That is reassuring. I thank the Minister of State for his comprehensive answer.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

I thank the Minister of State for his update on the circular economy. I welcome his statement on the banning of disposable vapes. They are a scourge on our environment and far too easy to buy. There is the added issue of HHC vapes, which are causing problems for people with mental health issues. That is a matter for the Department of Health, though.

I welcome the deposit return scheme. 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. Its success has been great to see, though. My understanding is that the success rate when segregating recyclables in this way is much higher.

That said, the scheme is not without its issues, and we need to ensure that these are tackled. I am not looking for praise, but I wish to give an example of what can happen. 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. 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. I was overjoyed. There was a sense of success. However, there will be issues. What are we doing to ensure we deal with teething issues as quickly as we can so that as many people as possible use the deposit return machines?

When these machines are used, what is the successful percentage of recycling compared with domestic recycling options?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The deposit return scheme is there to address a problem, namely, not enough of our bottles and cans are being recycled and are ending up in the environment. If the Deputy has ever taken part in a Tidy Towns group and walked along the roads, he will have seen that approximately half of the litter items the group picks up are bottles or cans. Some Tidy Towns groups are quite analytical in what they do. A group in Wexford counted all of the litter items and found that 50% were bottles and cans. They get embedded in the grass verges along the roads after people throw them out of cars and so on.

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. 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.

Deputy O'Sullivan asked about the issues we are facing and how do we make things better. We are in the transition period. The first four months are difficult because this is the time the shops are selling off old stock and bringing in new stock. Some of the items people have at home are not accepted by the machines because they did not pay a deposit on them, while others are. That can be confusing. It is also a period when people are learning new habits. I do not just mean the habit of bringing bottles and cans back to the supermarket, which is the same habit as keeping plastic bags for supermarket shopping and keeping them in a drawer or having a place in the kitchen for them. There are also new habits for retailers. The latter have to learn that: when the hopper is full, they have to empty it; when there is no paper for receipts, they have to change the paper; and when somebody manages to put in bottle that has liquid in it, they have to clean out the machine. I have spoken to shopkeepers and supermarkets about this. They have told me they must allocate a certain number of hours for their staff to carry out this work.

The volume is increasing significantly all the time. Yesterday, 2 million items were brought back. That was on a weekday. Go back a couple of weeks and it was 1 million items. Go back another few weeks and it was 500,000. The frequency with which retailers must maintain the machines and empty them is increasing. At the same time, the amount of money they get for handling these items is also doubling. This is because they get 2.2 cent for taking in one container.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

I apologise, but I am afraid I will run out of time.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I apologise; I am wasting Deputy O'Sullivan's time.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

No, I am happy to hear that the volume going through the machines is increasing exponentially. It is a teething issue. I urge people to have patience.

It has been brought to my attention that people still need domestic recycling services for paper and other waste. A big volume of what went into the recycling bins was made up of plastic bottles. People will not now be filling their recycling bins as quickly as previously, and this could be seen as a positive. Can anything be done to reduce the cost of domestic recycling? Some people feel like they are paying on the double.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

If it takes longer to fill the bin because it is not full of empty bottles and containers, people should have fewer lifts taking place. Many of the bin companies charge per lift or per kilo. People will have a lower volume and a lower weight. The majority of waste collectors now charge by waste or volume rather than a fixed fee. The cost of waste removal should come down.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

Some still have a fixed fee, and this is probably where the issue arises.

I heard an interesting debate on the radio yesterday about paper bags. My mind flipped a couple of times thinking about the process. An individual was complaining that a certain shop had charged them for a paper bag. As the debate went on, I realised that a habit we should all get into is to bring our own bags in order that there would be no necessity for bags whatsoever. We saw the success from an environmental perspective of the plastic bag levy. I remember as a child seeing plastic bags on every bush, sceach and willow tree along the roadside. It has certainly helped to tackle this. Is the Department considering a measure in respect of paper bags in order to change people's habits?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I am not considering it at present, but if Deputy O'Sullivan wants to make a proposal, I will look at it. Paper bags are biodegradable. If a paper bag is left in a bush or hedge it will return-----

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

There is the energy that goes into making them.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I accept that this is absolutely a factor. The vast majority of people now have a habit of having a drawer in their kitchen with plastic bags in it. Before they go to the shops, they fish out some of these reusable plastic bags and refill them.

That is how it mostly happens. People can be caught short. There has to be some option for someone who is caught short, but we have substantially dealt with that problem. If the Deputy wants to make a proposal in respect of paper bags, I am happy to look at it.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

Let us take the temperature first.

Deputy Paul Murphy

To start with the deposit return scheme, does the Minister of State agree that it does not really deal with the fundamental issue which is that we need to stop single-use plastics? It is better than them going into landfill or being incinerated - there is no question about it - but 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. The issue is that we need to get away from single-use plastics.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I substantially agree with the Deputy. Reuse is better than recycling. 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. The answer to these environmental problems does not involve a single bullet. We are doing deposit return machines. I am also sponsoring water fountains all around the country as well.

Deputy Paul Murphy

The deposit return scheme we opted gone for is in contrast to the one in Germany, for example, where there are two Pfand systems. There is a higher Pfand system and a lower Pfand system. The higher one involves reusable bottles going back into the machine. They are not shredded, turned back into bottles and used again; they are refilled. Our system is purely one of shred bottles and then use a whole bunch of energy to turn them back into bottles. Are we locking in the use of single-use plastics?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

No. Germany had an existing reusable bottle scheme before it introduced its deposit return scheme. They wanted to make sure the deposit return scheme did not displace reusable containers, which are obviously better, so they set the up incentives in such a way that people would be better off reusing than engaging in a single use. However, people have the option of doing one or the other. The German authorities operate both schemes in parallel. I would like to see more reuse and more refilling going on in Ireland, and we will do everything we can to move towards that.

Deputy Paul Murphy

If the Minister of State wants to see more reuse, why do we not have, even at a minimum level, a two-tier deposit return system whereby we have reusable bottles accepted that are reused that are not shredded and turned into different bottles? If that is what the Minister of State says he wants to do, why has he not done it?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

One thing at a time. There were many options for what I could put into the first version of the deposit return scheme. I could have done glass. I could have opted for Tetra Pak products, etc. I had a million different options, but I wanted a working scheme to launch on the day when it was meant to. I look at other countries that took more than a decade and then did not manage to launch schemes at all.

Everything is available for version 2. For example, we could do charity donations where people can opt to give their money to charity rather than take it back. We can do different products. We could do reusable products. Those are all options for version 2. I will be pushing my officials to work on what they will launch in the next version. There will be changes happening this year, even in May.

Deputy Paul Murphy

The Minister of State agrees in general that there should be a ban on single-use plastics.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Do I agree there should be a ban on single-use plastics?

Deputy Paul Murphy

Yes.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

No. We banned a large number of single-use plastics. If the Deputy is asking should we ban all single-use plastics tomorrow, the answer is "No".

Deputy Paul Murphy

Not tomorrow, obviously, but should we move towards a ban?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Should we move towards a ban? Yes, we are doing that.

Deputy Paul Murphy

The Minister of State is not doing it.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Yes, I am.

Deputy Paul Murphy

Go on.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The single-use plastics directive, which I hope the Deputy is familiar with, banned the ten most common single-use plastic items that wash up on beaches. Since then, we moved on to cigarette butt filters, which are also single-use plastics. We then moved on to plastics in wet-wipes. We then moved on to single-use plastics in balloons. Really, we are moving through all the different products that have single-use plastics in them. We are incentivising people to either recycle or reuse and to move away from them and we are trying to lead by example. That is where we are moving on single-use plastics.

Deputy Paul Murphy

Is the slogan not "reduce, reuse, recycle"?

It kind of puts them all as being equally part of the solution. Is that not part of the problem? Recycling is ultimately not the solution; the solution is reduction and reuse. I do not know if the Minister of State saw the recent report from Britain on microplastics being released by the process of recycling. Recycling, while better than incineration or landfill, is a bit of an illusion by the petrochemical industry, which is making money from plastics. It seeks to pretend that we can keep using single-use plastics and that it can be done in some environmentally sustainable way, when, fundamentally, it is not sustainable to have the recycling of single-use plastics.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The slogan “Reduce, reuse, recycle” does not put those three options on an equal plane. It lists them in the sequential order of which one is best, starting with “reduce”, then “reuse” and then “recycle”. It is a waste hierarchy and it is part of the European waste hierarchy that we follow. The best thing to do is to reduce, that is, do not buy a bottle of fizzy drink, the second is to refill your bottle, and the third option, after the others, is to bring it back and put it in the machine to get it recycled and turned into another bottle. That is the waste hierarchy. They are not all equal.

Deputy Paul Murphy

People who are older than me will remember a time when they could buy fizzy drinks in a glass bottle and precisely bring them back and get them filled again. Is that not what we need to be doing? Water is one thing. People should all have reusable water containers and it is good to see the spread of fountains around the place, but we need to have that happening with other drinks. Does the Minister of State agree?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

We used to have a bottle deposit scheme for glass. I remember it, although I do not know if the Deputy is younger than me.

Deputy Paul Murphy

The Minister of State is probably slightly older than me.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I remember it. It applied to lemonade bottles and so on. Those same products were then sold in plastic. Clearly, the technology developed such that it was possible or cheaper to produce them in plastic and then have the plastic bottle thrown away and just make another in a single-use way. It was an example of technology moving forward to allow us to create a very wasteful system. The Deputy’s question is whether we can bring back refillable glass bottles. That is the case in Germany and the Netherlands for beer bottles, for example, where there is a standard-sized bottle. That bottle is heavier than a regular single-use glass bottle because it has to be able to endure being picked up and knocked about a bit. One of the issues with that is the weight of these containers being shuffled around, so there is energy use in terms of moving them, refilling them and reusing them, which is a challenge. There is also a challenge from the manufacturers, who may want to use their own branding in the shape of their bottles, if we make a common bottle that everybody has to use.

It is definitely worth looking at. If it works in another country, is it something we should try to emulate? It is definitely something we will be looking at in our circularity gap report, which will come out this summer.

Deputy Paul Murphy

I have a final question regarding the frustrations many people feel about the return machines. It is remarkable that this comes up when we are out 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. It is understandably frustrating. Is there any issue about the kind of machines we are using compared with the machines in Germany, for example, or is the Minister of State saying it is purely a teething issue? Second, what about the issue of accessible machines for people in wheelchairs? Again, this is a problem that has been raised with me repeatedly.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Those are both reasonable questions. At the moment, we have six approved suppliers for these machines. Most of those suppliers are the international suppliers that will be seen in any other country in the world, and this works in 40 countries so it is well tested. Some 86% of the time, the machines are available, although that means that one time in seven, they are not available. Many of the machines display a message saying they are broken when they are full or the paper needs to be changed. There really is a learning curve for retailers in maintaining these machines, which are new to them. This is the same as when people get a piece of office equipment that runs out of paper and they have to maintain it. What we are looking at is moving that reliability up to 95%, which is what we would expect to see given the experience in other European countries.

Many retailers will have more than one machine available in order that at least one of them will be working. The truth is we have had people disappointed when they arrive and the machine is not working. Six out of seven times, people are not having that experience. That is not good enough and we will do better than that. It is working for most people and I am not deaf to the complaints of people who have had a bad experience.

The next issue is the accessibility of the machines. By law, all the machines have to be accessible for everybody. The slot to put in the bottles and cans is at 1.2 m, which is the height at which it was set to be reachable from a wheelchair. Re-turn engaged with the National Disability Authority before the launch of the scheme and it is continuing to do so. It is also listening to the complaints from people with disabilities who are having difficulties using the scheme or are asking questions. It has updated the guidance for retailers to explain to people with disabilities how to use the machines better and it is convening a forum of people with disabilities, including people with lived experience of disability, to see what it can do to make the scheme work better for everybody.

Deputy Paul Murphy

I thank the Minister of State.

Deputy Richard Bruton

I welcome the work the Minister of State has undertaken since the passage of the Act. I must say, however, that his Department continues to view the circular economy through the very narrow lens of waste and levies on waste materials. That is evidenced in his own presentation but also in the plan which he recently presented, where the ambition is zero growth in waste per head of population over the next six years. That is simply not ambitious enough in the waste arena, let alone in the wider circular economy context.

Food waste is continuing to grow, from the latest numbers I have seen. Our recycling rates are quoted as 41% and next year we have to hit 55%. We have a problem here. I am looking forward to the game-changer which I hope will come when the Minister of State publishes the circular economy strategy. As he knows, that strategy is to be sectoral. We are to have targets for material use reduction in each sector, reductions in the numbers of materials which are non-recyclable and increases in repair and reuse. It is all there in the Bill. We are also to have improvement in maintenance and the optimal use of products which are deployed.

The key here is to take a much bigger picture. The Government has not really cottoned on to the potential of the circular economy as an approach that will look at biodiversity and climate, as well as looking at the end of the waste stream. The extreme example is in travel, where we have materials sitting outside every one of our homes and 95% of the time they are idle. Our model of meeting our travel needs is quite dysfunctional and a circular economy approach would start to address this.

Some 90% of people of my age are living in homes which are far too big for our needs and there really is not any user-friendly approach to help people remain in their own neighbourhoods and still right-size their properties. There is a bigger arena of potential in this than what is currently being tapped. That is my little rant for the day.

Where is the bigger strategy that will actually start to shift the dial in key sectors? Will we see, particularly for food and construction, a sectoral strategy with a big tent encompassing architects, designers, procurers of buildings, waste management on site, reuse, the EPA and a proper integrated approach to improving the impact of construction and food in our economy?

I welcome the green public procurement document but I tried to read it before the meeting and I could not find a single target or a baseline figure for where we are at or hope to get to in any sector, be it school meals, as the Chair was talking about, construction or anything else. Who will drive this?

Will it happen through the work of the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications or will there be a responsibility to report for every State body that procures at any scale? What is meant by making a green choice is not defined. I know it is complicated but I could not find it within the document. Our recircularity rate is 2%. That is what we need to start shifting and we need to redesign how we think about things if we are to achieve that. What will the impact of the deposit and return scheme be on conventional collectors for whom this is probably the most valuable piece going into the green bin? Are we going to see financial push back from the charges on green bins? That very valuable stream is no longer being collected by the standard collectors.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I thank Deputy Bruton. He started by saying his impression of the circular economy strategy is that it is all about waste and levies and that is what he took from my initial statement. He believes I am too focused on waste and waste levies. It is a broader challenge than that. Beyond waste and levies we need to make sure that one can repair things, that there is a strong repair sector. That involves skilling people up for repair skills that may have gone away due to our becoming a throw-away society. There are also sharing technologies, for example the companies that provide car or sharing services.

Deputy Richard Bruton

Where is the strategy for that?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The circularity gap report that is coming out this summer will cover it. There is also the durability of products, the information given to consumers which in the future will show durability ratings for products listed on a very simple scale of a,b,c,d,e,f,g, showing how long it is expected that a product will last and what its lifetime is so that consumers can make informed decisions. For example, when they are buying household equipment, beyond looking at the brand name, they can tell whether a product is going to be longlasting. There are also provisions under the EU right to repair, guaranteeing that people have access to repair manuals and spare parts going into the future which will help keep products in use. The Deputy is right, it should not all be about waste and levies but waste and levies are the low-hanging fruit, the first thing that can be gone after.

I mentioned in my opening statement that our circularity rate is below 2%. According to Eurostat we have the second lowest rate in Europe so we have a distance to go. What the Circular Economy Act says is that we will be above average by 2030. In order to get there we have to analyse where we are falling down and what are the easiest things to do first. The largest area that we can improve on is construction and demolition waste. The EPA has recently issued these determinations on end of waste which will greatly improve the ability of builders to reuse waste products, not only from their own sites but from neighbouring sites. They will be able to reuse soil and stone and those types of things rather than having to quarry for aggregates and then having to landfill their demolition products. This massively reduces the number of truck movements because when one has a pile of pebbles they do not have to go and landfill it in the country and then buy more aggregates from somebody else. Clearly this is something that builders want themselves as the current system is costing them a lot of money. I know the Deputy regularly proposes that we have a co-operative or sectoral compact approach to this. It is actually in the interests of the organisations in the industry-----

Deputy Richard Bruton

Two years ago we were talking about this Bill that became an Act. We were talking about the EPA. These are the very same things that we are talking about and I worry the scope to do something different is on a long lead. We need to nail down dates for each of these elements.

If you go into a building site today, the smaller building sites are not separating their material. Everything is going into a skip. That is the reality. We need to start shifting some of those things a bit quicker. That would be my concern.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

One of the reasons construction and demolition waste goes to landfill in Ireland is because it is exempt from landfill levies. The landfill levy is €85 a tonne and most of the material going into landfill now is exempt. The reason it was exempt until now was that it was not possible to get an EPA determination in a reasonable period of time to be able to use it on another site. That has changed. Once that change came in from the EPA this year, I then said it was time to end the landfill levy exemptions for construction and demolition waste. When that comes in - I expect it will come in September - it will be much more financially beneficial to reuse demolition products rather than send them to landfill. We send about 8 million tonnes of soil and stone product to landfill at the moment. Half of that will be reused. That will be the biggest jump in our circularity and recycling and a big reduction in the number of truck movements and the amount of quarrying and material sent to landfill this year. Those EPA determinations have been made. That is a very positive thing to look forward to and progress is being made. It is a difficult thing to get to but it is in the interest of the builders, if not in the interests of people who are quarrying or operating a landfill for a living.

Deputy Richard Bruton

Does the Minister of State want to comment on green procurement?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Deputy Bruton said he did not have a long time to read the document and that he could not see targets within it. In fact, three targets occur to me. There is a target for textiles, where 20% textiles bought by the public sector should be from recycled fibres. There is a target that 10% of food bought by the public sector should be organic. In addition, the public sector should favour upcycled ICT equipment over new equipment, which is a big change because until now I came across public sector bodies that simply ruled out the purchase of secondhand, upcycled or refurbished ICT equipment, whereas the purchase of such equipment was popular in the private sector. Those three areas - ICT equipment, food and textiles - are specifically covered by the green procurement. Deputy Bruton also asked who will to enforce or drive this or ensure these targets are in place. I think that was the Deputy's question.

Deputy Richard Bruton

As the Minister of State certainly knows, the practice has been that it is the procurers who decide what it is they are procuring and they create the need for the framework. If they do not embed the need for green principles, it will not make it into the framework and they will not be found to be non-compliant because it was not specified in the first place. The view has always been that unless the procurer is looking for a green procurement approach, one will not be provided. That has to change. The responsibility has to change. That means someone must ensure that happens because it is not the practice to date.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The person who actually buys the goods is responsible. In other words, the contracting authority or procurement person in that particular public sector body is responsible for following the rules. Among the reasons such persons do not follow the rules are that they do not know how to do so, it is just not easy or they are used to doing it the old way. That is why the Office of Government Procurement prepared a tool called the GPP criteria tool. When one is writing a procurement tender, this tool generates the green criteria which are measurable and objective. What you do not want to do is put into your tender that the textile or paper supplied should be good for the environment. What you want is the exact specification of how it should be green and how that should be measurable. The GPP criteria tool does that. That has been widely deployed and very useful.

It has given a degree of consistency across public procurement no matter who is buying.

Deputy Richard Bruton

Will the Minister of State or someone in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform let us know our baseline, say, in 2023 or whatever it was before this started and how we are progressing? Will there be some measures that will show us that information? I do not imagine than an awful lot of textiles are being procured, and maybe there are in hospitals, or organic food. We need to see that for big construction and procurement projects, reuse targets are being deployed, etc.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The data we are collecting is improving all the time. For example, every time a product is purchased from a framework, we get the data back on it. We are requiring more data from people bidding for contracts at the time they bid for them. We are collecting a lot more data. The OGP does have a lot more information now and I am focusing on that. I am happy to go into more details on what I have in a subsequent meeting, but the Deputy is right.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

I thank the Minister of State for coming in today. My daughter asked me to say "Thank you very much" on her behalf as she makes an absolute killing from returning bottles and cans, which also considerably reduces the amount of pocket money required from her parents.

I want to raise the issue of disability proofing the new recycling machines. When the circular economy Bill was before the Dáil, I raised the issue of disability proofing with the Minister of State and the Bill was amended to reflect the need to disability proof. Therefore, if consultation happened in respect of setting up this scheme and developing machines and there was a requirement to disability-proof this policy, I am at a loss to know how we have ended up with machines that are inaccessible for a lot of wheelchair users and people with visual impairment. The machines do not display instructions in Braille. The machines are silent. There are no verbal instructions, for instance, to say when machines are full. People in wheelchairs either cannot reach the slot where the bottle goes in or, if the bottle is refused, they are unable to put their hand in to retrieve the bottle to put it back in again. I understand this works very well for the majority of people, but one in four people have a disability. Will the Minister of State go through the stakeholder consultation that Re-turn Ireland did with disability groups in the establishment of this scheme? Re-turn Ireland was set up on 1 July 2022. Will the Minister of State give me the exact times, number and whom Re-turn Ireland consulted among the disability groups in designing this scheme?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Two rounds of consultations took place for the deposit return scheme. There were thousands of submissions, including from disability groups and individuals with disabilities. The Re-turn organisation also consulted the National Disability Authority directly to see how best to structure the scheme. In the regulations, as the Deputy said, at her request I included a rule that the retailers must have accessible machines. That was before the launch. Now after the launch, we can see how it is working in practice. It is important that for anybody or any group in society who finds it is not working for them, I am open to listening to their issues and adjusting the scheme, if needed, in any way that I can.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

A huge amount of money would have been spent on designing these machines. They will not be easily retrofitted to make them accessible so this work should have been done. Re-turn Ireland won a contract or was the designated body that the Government established to run the scheme. I gather from what the Minister of State has said is that there was no direct consultation with the likes of the Irish Wheelchair Association and Vision Ireland. Those stakeholders were asked to consult in the same way as individuals were asked but there was no actual direct consultation with those groups. Is that correct?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Through the National Disability Authority, as I understand it.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

I would like to get an understanding of exactly what level of consultation took place, and perhaps this needs to come from Re-turn Ireland itself.

My guess is that either there was no or very limited consultation or that when consultation happened, the feedback it got was not incorporated into the design because we essentially have machinery in all the major supermarkets across the country that people with disabilities cannot use and that is completely unacceptable. We talk about just transition. We want everybody to be able to participate in the circular economy and we want everyone to be able to do their bit for the environment, and we have potentially set up a scheme that includes a significant portion of Irish people. That is just not good enough. With regard to the Government establishing Re-turn Ireland, what was the Government's direction to Re-turn as to the level of consultation it had to take regarding making those machines accessible to people?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

There are two things in the regulations I issued, one of which is a statutory instrument that determines the rules under which the scheme has to operate. That includes a rule that the machines should be accessible. The Re-turn Ireland organisation itself also has rules for its retailers. It made up its own list of rules for how retailers have to operate, which is not statutory or is not a piece of legislation.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

That is just to use them, however. Essentially, Re-turn Ireland was to set up a scheme that was accessible under the rules that Government set down. Dopes the Minister of Sate believe it has set up a scheme that is accessible, and, if not, what is he going to do?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I do not think accessibility is a binary thing, so for-----

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

It is a binary thing for someone in a wheelchair who cannot reach the hole to put in the container.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

It is not that the machine is either accessible or not accessible. There are many people with disabilities who are using the scheme successfully. One of the things I have done has been to speak to people in wheelchairs directly and to people who are blind who have used the scheme. I have taken their suggestions on board, for example, that staff should have better training and be able to explain to them how to use it and the question of what should be on the screens or whether the machines should require a screen. Certainly, all the machines I have seen do not require people to interact with a visual screen. People can put a bottle in the slot and feel with their hand whether it has been rejected or not. They do not have to push a button to receive the receipt. The receipt comes out automatically after a period of time.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

It is hard, though. I am really conscious of my time, so the Minister of State might forgive me if I am cutting across him. If a blind person goes up to a machine to try to access it, there is no voice telling him or her what to do. There are no buttons, symbols or Braille or anything on the machine. The first time I used it, I was sort of standing there wondering what to do. If a person is blind, it is incredibly difficult to do that independently. I would consider that if the Government specified that these were to be accessible machines, the fact that someone who is visually impaired cannot use them and there is no assistance on the machines to enable them to do so clearly says the machines are not accessible and that Re-turn did not adhere to the directions of Government. In the event that Re-turn does not adhere, where is the accountability in that?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I can certainly look at the Deputy's suggestions around there being no sound from the machine or that it does not have Braille markings on the outside. I can look at this. From talking to people who are blind, however, it is a challenge to use a supermarket in general.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

I am sure it is.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

People go around the supermarket and cannot tell one product from another. How do they read the prices that are on the products in front of them?

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

However, the Minister-----

An Cathaoirleach

The Deputy might allow the Minister of State to answer.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The reverse vending machine is-----

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

Yes, but we are not talking about shopping. We are talking about-----

An Cathaoirleach

The Deputy has to give him a chance to answer.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The reverse vending machine is actually a piece of equipment in a supermarket that people can use more easily than selecting a product or determining the price of a product.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

However-----

Deputy Ossian Smyth

It is something that is being used in practice, but if we can make it better and if it is felt that the machines should be making an audio noise to let people know what is going on or they should have a Braille indicator on the outside, that would be one thing. The blind people I spoke to cannot read Braille. It is not a universal thing among people who are blind. Everybody's disability is different. We need to reach as many people as possible. If the scheme needs to be changed in any way, I am absolutely open to doing that so we can make the machines usable by as many people as possible.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

The best time to make them accessible was at the start. According to the Minister of State, the Government said it was to be an accessible machine, but it seems to me that Re-turn has not done that. What engagement will the Minister of State have with Re-turn to tell it it did not adhere to our guidance and statutory instrument and to ask it how it will rectify the situation? Going shopping must be a nightmare for someone who is blind, but we do not add another challenge for them just because they already have all of these other challenges. When setting up a new scheme, we should have followed best practice. The Irish Wheelchair Association was not even consulted. Setting up a scheme like this is a significant undertaking, but there are fundamental elements that must be gotten right. Unfortunately, the Government has not done that.

The Minister of State said-----

An Cathaoirleach

I want to be fair to-----

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

But this relates to something the Minister of State said.

An Cathaoirleach

The Deputy has had nearly 15 minutes.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

Has the consultative group the Minister of State mentioned been set up?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

A consultative forum for disability has been set up.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

Has it met?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I am not aware of whether it has. I would have to ask Re-turn. I speak to Re-turn weekly. I can ask it on behalf of the Deputy.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

On 8 February, the Minister of State told me it was being set up. One would have hoped that it would have met by this stage.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

On the deposit return scheme, the Minister of State said the machines were 86% operational and he was hoping to get it to 95%. How does he intend to do that? Is 95% the target for the number of machines working 86% of the time or-----

Deputy Ossian Smyth

It is a measure of availability or uptime, of whether the machine can be used. The error message is sometimes misleading, in that it can say that the machine is broken when it is actually just full or needs paper to print receipts.

The Deputy is asking how we can go from 86% to 95%, which is the normal amount. First, the retailers are on a learning curve about how frequently they have to empty the bins, change the paper and clean out the machines. Second, the public will become more used to using the machines. Sometimes, the machines have not been used correctly. People might expect to be able to return a plastic bottle that contains oil or shampoo. Some of those liquids have managed to get into the machines, leading to the retailers having to clean them out. People will realise what is accepted and what is not. For example, dairy is not accepted. Only drinks are accepted. This realisation will help as well. Third, there are six suppliers, which have variable rates of availability. Each supermarket chain has gone with a particular supplier. Some of the suppliers are doing better than others. There is a learning curve for some of the suppliers that have experienced issues.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

What about the performance of the machines themselves? There were initial teething problems with reading barcodes, largely to do with the database. Has the database been updated? Is the Minister of State satisfied that there is no longer a significant problem and that there have been improvements?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

This will help. On 1 June, it will be illegal to display a product on the shelf or to offer a product for sale that does not have the logo on it. Currently, we are in a period when businesses can keep selling off their old stock. On 1 June, though, every drink we buy, from 150 ml in size to 3 l, has to be returnable. That will make it a much simpler-to-understand scheme and create less of a chance of someone putting something into the machine on which a deposit was not paid.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

The points about accessibility have been well made. I would also raise the issue of language. The signage is only in English. Gaeltacht areas, of which I have two in my county, have reasonably raised the question of the Irish language. I will leave this matter with the Minister of State. I believe colleagues have-----

Deputy Ossian Smyth

The machines in my local supermarket are in every language, including Irish. I have spoken to Re-turn and asked it to ensure that the machines are working in Irish as well as the other languages commonly used in Ireland.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

There are gaps there. I just wanted to bring that to the Minister of State's attention. It is something we would all like to see progress on. I will jump to another area, that of illegal dumping and littering. Does the Minister of State have an assessment of the extent of the problem? Is it worsening? Is it getting better? What are the underlying causes? I am thankful that there has now been movement on the CCTV issue but what is the measure of this problem in terms of both waste and cost?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I do not have an overall picture. The Deputy raises a reasonable point. We fund local authorities' anti-dumping initiatives. We provide more than €3 million a year. I can ask the local authorities to report back to me on the volume of material they are removing.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

We will have different opinions on the root causes. The Minister of State will be aware it has been argued that, because of our waste collection model and the costs associated with it, people are avoiding their bin charges by dumping illegally. Others might argue a different point. It is very difficult when we do not have good information. That would be helpful.

Food waste is one of the areas the Minister of State touched on in his opening statement. What are his priorities in that regard? There are really good groups like FoodCloud working in this area. Are there plans to expand community infrastructure, such as community fridges, larders and cupboards, to increase the amount of surplus food redistributed? Looking at international examples, has the Minister of State considered the French law requiring all surplus food to be redistributed rather than dumped? In Denmark, food waste is used in the energy system. What are the policy options the Government is looking at to address the issue of food waste?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

One of the things we did last year was that, on 1 July, I brought in a rule requiring all commercial facilities to have a biowaste bin. Up to then, a large proportion of businesses simply had one residual waste bin and were not segregating their waste at all. They are all now required to segregate. Second, on 1 January, I made it mandatory for all waste collectors to offer brown bins to everybody in the country. Everybody in Ireland should be offered the ability to put waste into a brown bin and have it collected separately.

As the Deputy said, FoodCloud has done something amazing. It has tried to use technology to link up people who have excess food with people who require it. It has done this through charities and at retail level. It has also done it at farm level. It has developed food products based on that.

The Deputy asked whether we have looked at what the French have done. I am definitely looking at the experience in France with its rules on packaging in supermarkets. The French have outlawed some forms of plastic packaging on food. What we are now analysing is whether that has increased or decreased food waste. By not wrapping things, you run the risk of products going off sooner. If you do not wrap things in plastic, is the alternative product used to wrap the produce going to have an effect? Food donation and distribution is one of the main things in the food waste prevention roadmap. Obviously, a lot of food is already being donated by retailers through FoodCloud. There are also a number of apps you can get on your phone through which you can see which retailers in your area have extra food. That is of clear benefit to all. It is expensive to dispose of food.

We are also developing the biomethane and anaerobic digestion sectors. We have a national target to reach 5.7 TW of electricity generated from biomethane by 2030.

That is a policy being developed by the Department of agriculture in combination with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. Biogas will be injected back into the grid for use. DHL is using biogas to power its trucks for long-distance delivery of goods throughout the country, which is significant because it is the largest shipping agency and trucking company in the country. Those are a few things to give the Deputy some information.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

The Minister of State will find that the French example, and it is welcome that model is being looked at as regards packaging, also has a piece in respect of obligations around minimising food waste. It is to be hoped the Minister of State will turn that up and have a look at it when he is looking at that model.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Definitely. Thank you.

Deputy Martin Kenny

I thank the Minister of State for his statement. A lot of ground has been covered and issues discussed that I wanted to raise with him.

One of the issues is the deposit return scheme. While it is certainly good to have that scheme in place and it is very welcome, people have come to me to say they went with 25 bottles, put them through the machine, but it only took six of them and they had to bring them home. They could not see the difference between one bottle and the other. There are issues there. When people ask for help in the shop, nobody really knows about it or is able to help. There are spaces that need improvement. I fully accept this is a new scheme that will take time to bed in. In a general way, however, we have to look back. We have come a long distance from where we were years ago and massive improvements have been made. That has to be acknowledged.

I will mainly deal with one issue. I look around at all the screens in the room. Most of those screens will probably burn out in a few years' time and will not be replaced. The parts in them will not be replaced. I imagine the big screens behind us cost a couple of thousand euro each. It is the same in every house in the country. I had an experience a couple of years ago where we had a fridge-freezer that started to make noise. I pulled it out from the wall, plugged it out, turned the phone light on and found a little piece of plastic from the small fan at the bottom that had broken off and fallen down. It was a small fan that cooled the gas. That was the job it had to do. The fan was running, but part of it had broken off so it was not balanced anymore and was, therefore, making noise. I rang the people we bought the fridge from. I got onto guys who are geniuses at this kind of thing and who get bits to fix things. Nobody could find anywhere to get this particular piece of the fan. I went on Google and everywhere else to try to find whether it was possible to buy the part. It was not possible. Within a couple of months, that fridge was taken away and a brand-new one put in its place, all for the sake of a little piece of plastic, probably two inches long, which broke off. It brought home to me that manufacturers have, up to now, been producing goods they do not want to last for long and in fact want them to break.

The reason I used the example of the fridge is my mother had one of those big white fridges with big heavy doors. Those fridges were made in Czechoslovakia, if I remember rightly. It was probably 50 years old and it still worked. I do not know where it is now. That difference is something we have to get to grips with. Items that have a short life are continually being produced. I know we have to get people fixing things. The key to it is, yes, get people fixing things but, first of all, we have to get the people who make them to make them to last. That is one of the issues we need to deal with. I am interested in what proposals we have in that regard. I understand this is a much bigger than an Irish issue. Many of these products are not made here but elsewhere. What are we doing to ensure such products will last?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

I will address the Deputy's question about the deposit return scheme and his constituent who found that most of his containers were rejected. This is an aspect of the transition period, when retailers can still sell products that do not have a deposit logo on them. The two elements of customer dissatisfaction are bottles being rejected and having to bring them home and, second, the machine not working. It is critical we do better on both and we are. They are improving every day. I get the stats every day on them.

We notice that the kitchen appliances from our childhood could last decades and now, when we go to get something repaired, the repair person says it is five years old and asks why we do not buy a new one. What has changed there? Something has gone backwards.

We have gone towards more complex machines that are also more fragile or, possibly, have built-in obsolescence.

The way to make products work well, last a long time and be repairable must happen at the design stage. The EU's Ecodesign Directive for products will try to deal with that. The directive will guarantee spare parts, which is the problem mentioned by the Deputy because he could not source a little piece of plastic to keep a machine working. The directive will also ensure that service manuals are available, that the skills exist and that one can find a person who has those skills in one's area. Monaghan County Council has a website called repairmystuff.ie and I would like to work with the county council to make the situation better. Basically, we want to ensure that people can look in their area when something is broken in their house and find someone who can help.

There has been a loss of skills. A lot of our immigrants from eastern Europe and Ukraine are filling in the gaps as shoemakers, working in repair shops, etc. There is now a really good scheme to train people to fix kitchen appliances which was put together by Government agencies and manufacturers. For the first time people are being trained to fix appliances in a structured way in a classroom. Up to now such training had been done on the job by way of the apprenticeship method. The ability to fix the small number of appliances one might find in a kitchen is a skill that people can bring anywhere. Also, for the first time, the scheme trains women, which was almost unheard of in fixing kitchen appliances. There is no reason women should not do repair work as well. The programme has been very successful.

We are bringing in durability ratings and they are being introduced across the EU. When people go into a shop selling, for example, washing machines they can compare durability ratings in order to make an informed decision. For example, a display might show one brand of washing machine lasts five years, another lasts ten years, etc. The durability ratings are tested by an independent agency which estimates how long a product will last.

The combination of guaranteeing the availability of spare parts, service manuals and skills, durability ratings and building in durability into the design process are all part of the answer to the problem.

Deputy Martin Kenny

When will this happen? Yes, skills are being developed and people are trained to repair stuff. Around 20 years ago a local person from my area did the course on repairing household appliances with, I think, AnCO. The man repaired appliances for only a few years because he could not get parts for most of the household appliances. For example, the first part to stop working in most washing machines, which makes them roar like an aeroplane, is a broken bearing. People could not get bearings anymore and the manufacturers produced washing machines with a sealed unit so people could not replace them.

The Minister of State mentioned an EU directive. When will we reach the stage where we can force manufacturers not to build machines with an inbuilt short lifespan and that can be repaired?

Deputy Ossian Smyth

It is currently the law that manufacturers must provide spare parts. The Deputy told me that he could not find a part for his fridge-freezer. I do not know how old his fridge-freezer was but for current products, manufacturers must provide spare parts and service manuals.

The Ecodesign Directive came in a few months ago. As I do not have those details to hand, I can send the Deputy the times when all the different parts of the directive come into force.

An Cathaoirleach

To follow on from Deputy O'Rourke's contribution on food waste, is there potential for a co-operative model in communities to handle food waste from enterprises such as restaurants, hotels, schools and hospitals, which generate a lot of food waste? Is there allowance in our legislative framework in respect of the circular economy provisions, plus the potential for energy production through anaerobic digestion and the production of biomethane for energy generation? Is it possible for a community to get together, analyse the food waste that is being produced and set up a sustainable energy community, a co-operative or a social enterprise?

Perhaps the Minister of State would enlighten me on that point.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

Does the Chair mean a community anaerobic digester?

An Cathaoirleach

Essentially, yes, in that different elements of the community could feed into it and perhaps then get a dividend from the sale of biomethane or electricity.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

It is already happening. FoodCloud and organisations like that are all about building networks of people who have something they do not want and people who want it in return, whether they want it as feedstock for their anaerobic digestion or as food they can eat. FoodCloud's technology platform is about connecting people who are in surplus with people who are in deficit and in matching people up. It is just one of a number of companies that do that. Many of the supermarkets now have a number of arrangements to transfer their food to people who can make use of it. It is definitely a network arrangement.

For communities, there has long been a community composting movement and anaerobic digestion is something people are starting to do. It is very common in Germany. There are tens of thousands of anaerobic digestion schemes in communities in Germany and I think that will be part of the anaerobic digestion strategies coming out of the bioeconomy policy from the Department of agriculture and the Department of the environment.

An Cathaoirleach

We will look to the Department of agriculture for progress there. I am also thinking about urban anaerobic digestion which I think is possible in Germany. I expect that we might see that kind of development over here also.

Deputy Ossian Smyth

If anyone is interested in any social enterprise and wants to try doing anaerobic digestion locally in their community, they can apply to do it through the circular economy innovation grant scheme and we will consider that.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank the Minister of State for that. As there are no more questions, we are at the point where I thank the Minister of State and his officials for their engagement this afternoon. It has been very interesting and this is the first of a series of engagements we will have in the area of the circular economy in the next few weeks. I acknowledge the work of Deputy Bruton in elevating this issue within the committee and in doing quite a good deal of research and work to date in educating and preparing us for these sessions. We would hope, in turn, after a series of meetings to influence the direction the Minister of State takes. We will issue a report in due course and we hope the Minister of State will take its recommendations on board and that we make more progress on this issue.

The joint committee adjourned at 12.38 p.m. until 11 a.m. on Tuesday, 14 May 2024.