David Attenborough’s most recent Blue Planet TV series aired in October 2017. Such was its impact among audiences that business owners and environmentalists credit it with a causing a seismic shift in consumer consciousness.
In particular, it drove awareness of the fact that more than 80 per cent of marine litter is made up of plastics. Due to its slow rate of decomposition, this plastic accumulates in seas, oceans and on beaches worldwide, and its residue in marine species such as sea turtles, seals, whales and birds. It also ends up in fish and shellfish, which means it ends up in us too.
Within a year of the series’ debut, Europe’s MEPs had backed the introduction of an EU-wide ban on throwaway plastics, to be effected by 2021. In a 571 to 53 vote majority, they agreed to ban plastic everyday items such as straws, cutlery and cotton buds, all of which too often end up in the sea.
They added products made of oxo-degradable plastics, such as bags or packaging, and fast food containers made of expanded polystyrene.
The use of items for which no alternative currently exists must be reduced too, by at least 25 per cent by 2025. This includes single-use items such as burger boxes, sandwiches boxes or food containers for fruit, vegetables, desserts or ice cream.
Member states are drafting their own national plans to encourage the use of products suitable for multiple use, as well as re-use and recycling. Other plastics, such as drinks bottles, will have to be collected separately and recycled at a rate of 90 per cent by 2025.
According to a spokesperson for the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the current (caretaker) Government “is committed to leading the way in reducing single-use plastics and working both at a national and European level to tackle the problem”.
As part of that, it has agreed that Government departments and bodies will no longer purchase single-use plastic cups, cutlery and straws. It is also “committed to a 90 per cent plastic bottle collection target and a 55 per cent plastic packaging recycling target,” she says.
Clean oceans initiative
The Government has commenced a clean oceans initiative to collect, reduce and reuse marine litter and has also commissioned a study to establish the best way to reach a 90 per cent collection target for beverage bottles, which is currently under consideration. It has also introduced legislation to ban micro beads, the kind of single-use plastics used in some facial scrubs and body washes.
The Government’s Climate Action Plan contains commitments to look at the development and implementation of a suite of measures to reduce the impact of single-use plastics. It is looking at a number of environmental levies, including a possible levy on single-use plastics, as part of a review of the Environment Fund.
The fund was established in 2001. The following year, Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce a plastic bag levy, so we know levies work. The bag levy led to a 90 per cent drop in the use of plastic bags and raised millions of euro for environmental and waste management projects.
The Climate Action Plan also commits the Government to further regulating and incentivising producers of waste, particularly packaging, to do more to eliminate waste and to use recycled materials, with industry-funded recycling scheme Repak providing both the carrot and the stick in the form of a fee structure that rewards recyclability.
The fear that changes aren’t happening quickly enough has caused both individuals and non-Governmental organisations to take action, however. In early 2018, environmental charity Voice Ireland partnered with Friends of the Earth to launched Sick of Plastic, a campaign which aimed to capture what its founders saw as the public’s frustration with single-use plastic.
The problem was that, despite the success of the plastic bag levy, people are in fact taking home more plastic packaging than ever before – we are just doing it in reusable shopping bags.
Voice Ireland has clear aims, including lobbying for the introduction of a deposit and return scheme for plastic and glass bottles and cans.
As well as the transposition of the EU ban on single-use plastic into Irish law, it wants supermarkets to reduce the amount of plastic packaging they use, and to offer more loose produce at competitive prices. “If you go to buy carrots, you’ll often find the bag of carrots is cheaper than loose carrots,” says Mindy O’Brien, Voice’s coordinator.
Reusable options
It wants businesses to move towards reusable options rather than switching to compostable items, which, it points out, are still single-use. Compostable plastics also take an “awfully long time” to break down in the ground, O’Brien points out.
Providing items in bulk and allowing customers to use their own containers would help, not least by bringing the additional benefit of allowing them only buy what they need, reducing waste generally.
Through Voice Ireland’s Shop and Drop campaign, consumers are encouraged to make their feelings known by leaving as much plastic packaging from their shopping behind them in the supermarket.
Currently, Ireland is the worst offender in Europe for plastic packaging per capita, O’Brien points out, at 61kg per person per year compared to a European average of 30kg. Ireland’s 61kg is the equivalent of 25 full bath-loads of squashed plastic wrappers.
The public is now very much behind the banning of single-use plastics, she reckons; “I’m 25 years doing this and I believe David Attenborough was a tipping point. While plastic has its place, we need to move away from single-use plastic.”
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is set to become the first local authority in the country to ban the supply or sale of items such as plastic takeaway containers and cutlery. The motion to ban them was put forward by Fine Gael councillor Barry Ward. “It was unanimously supported by the council,” says Ward, who adds that while there was some apprehension from business at first, generally the feedback has been good.
The move is currently open for public consultation. He expects the finished document will not include the banning of plastic bottles, as initially proposed, but will more likely see a move to introduce a deposit refund scheme. Similarly, an early suggestion of a €500 penalty for transgressing businesses is now unlikely to materialise.
The augurs are good and the public is more willing than ever to back such changes. The biggest barrier now facing changes in legislation is one it would have been impossible to predict – Covid-19. “Right now, everything else takes a back seat,” he says.
