Bottle and Can Deposit Return scheme criticised by Council Chair Martin Harley

The Chair of Donegal County Council, Cllr Martin Harley, has issued a plea for recycling centres in the county to work much closer with small businesses in dealing with plastic bottles and cans, following the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) at the beginning of February.

He said that small businesses in Donegal were facing enough challenges without the need to bring bags of bottles and cans that have an extra deposit on them, back to participating shops and supermarkets.

He feared that businesses would end passing the charge onto their customers and simply revert to their normal practices of the past, if the matter was not addressed properly

Speaking at the monthly meeting of the Lifford-Stranorlar Municipal District the Fine Gael councillor was critical of how small businesses are having to deal with the current situation:

“For small businesses, I am talking on a personal level, that have plastic bottles and cans, the collection of them hasn’t really been rolled out really.

“There are 1.9 billion bottles and cans that are bought in Ireland each year in Ireland, but I feel that the recycling centres, for small businesses, could take back the bottles and cans.

“I mean heading up to Lidl, SuperValu or wherever with a black bag of cans or bottles, you are taking up time on other people that could be using that service.

“But I think that there should be something in place that we should be working without recycling centres.

“If we are serious about this, it’s grand sticking 25 cents on a large bottle and 15 cents on the can, it looks like this is high and mighty and we are doing so much, but we are not doing bugger all, if we don’t have them recycled properly again.

“A business is just going to pass on the 25 cent and 15 cent onto the customer and just dump them the same way they were dumping them.

“We are not going to get any further forward, so I think that if we are going to be serious about this, we have to be working with the businesses.”

ABOVE: Cllr Martin Harley

He added it would be good to get feedback from the supermarkets and shops that have the vending machines, and while a figure of three million returns had been bandied around regarding the scheme operation in February, this compared to the 1.9million that was coming into and being used in the country “which is less than half a percent I would say”.

Therefore it was important to encourage much closer cooperation between the recycling centres and small businesses within the county, “to try and encourage businesses to try and take the bottles and cans back to them places and they will get so much back on it.

“We talk about sustainable businesses as well, but this is about sustainability as well.

His comments were supported by Sinn Fein Cllr Gary Doherty (above), who said that the scheme had been brought in “far too soon”.

“We didn’t have the infrastructure and we weren’t ready for it. And I still think that we are not ready for it. People in the community and never mind business owners have no idea how to properly utilise this scheme yet,” he suggested

Cllr Doherty added that while there was not much the council could do about the scheme as laudable as it is and its ambitions of it, in what it was setting out to achieve.