Laois TD wants plastic wrapping ban
Laois TD Brian Stanley has called for a ban on plastic wrapping and suggested putting Bord na Mona at the heart of the circular economy.
He made the comments while speaking on the Circular Economy Bill in the Dail. The new Bill will pave the way for more reuse and recycling as well as the use of CCTV cameras to tackle illegal dumping.
Welcoming the Bill, Deputy Stanley said: “We have to move away from the throwaway culture of single-use plastic. Of course we want people to change their habits and use less plastic. However, large companies continue to package stuff in plastic.’’
“I am sure the Minister sees it in supermarkets. Products are in plastic trays. We need to ban them. We do not need plastic trays any more. We know that,” he remarked.
“If they go into the recycling bin, they might wind up in India in a furnace somewhere or in China, having to be shipped halfway around the world. We need to stop it at source. Reuse is okay but it is only second best. Cutting off the source of the waste needs to be the priority,” insisted Deputy Stanley.
“We can do that through deposit return, for example. Let us move to using glass bottles. The page in my hand is A4 size. Why cannot we have standard bottles?
The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, will remember, as I do, when we used glass bottles which could be washed and reused repeatedly. People were paid to return them. Let us get away from plastic and remove it from society, in as far as we can, and try to reward people for good environmental habits,’’ Deputy Stanley said.
He said: “Our semi-State companies need to be at the heart of this. I am appealing to the Minister as a Dublin Deputy to look out at this. Bord na Móna is already involved in recycling and the circular economy.”
“It is operating major waste facility plants, one dealing with tyres and another dealing with household waste. It has really geared up in this area. We need to address this in such a way that we are not reinventing the wheel,” said Deputy Stanley.
He welcomed the Bill’s provisions on CCTV and said: “It is a pain in the head that we cannot use CCTV. It was being used very effectively in County Laois. Small cameras strapped to a bush or a tree were catching people littering.”
Deputy Stanley claimed “GDPR(General Data Protection Regulation) has gone crazy and we need to stop that. I do not know where the current interpretation of the regulation comes from but we are overusing GDPR and it is being used as an excuse sometimes. We need to use CCTV.”
He said “I ask the Minister to progress the Bill quickly so that we can accelerate these provisions and get mobile CCTV back in action at black spots.’’