The Government has been urged to reform or disband the \u201cshambolic\u201d Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) after it emerged that \u2018bin-raiding\u2019 for bottles and cans has cost Dublin City Council \u20ac500,000.<\/p>\n
The issue was raised in the D\u00e1il on Tuesday afternoon by Aont\u00fa leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn, who told Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin that the Government had incentivised people to dump rubbish on the streets \u201cin the name of cleaning up the country\u201d.<\/p>\n
He described the latest controversy regarding the DRS as \u201cincredible\u201d, and asked if the Taoiseach would now look to either reform or end the \u201cshambolic scheme\u201d.<\/p>\n
Martin said the \u201cbin scavenging\u201d reported by Dublin City Council needed to be examined more \u201cin terms of scale and prevalence\u201d, and added that the Government keeps all schemes under review.<\/p>\n
T\u00f3ib\u00edn had also questioned the amount of money accumulated by Re-turn, the private company that operates the DRS, claiming that \u20ac103 million in unredeemed deposits was \u201cresting in its account\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey also made money on the sale of aluminium cans that we collected for them, and they also get money from the producers of the drinks,\u201d said the Meath West TD.<\/p>\n
However, he said Re-turn still refuses to pay properly the shops that handle plastic and aluminium containers on its behalf, referring to the fact that it recently refused to increase its retailer handling fee of 2.2 cent per container.<\/p>\n
T\u00f3ib\u00edn said the DRS deposit was \u201clike a tax\u201d on consumers, except it doesn\u2019t go towards paying for hospitals, education, housing and other public services.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, it goes to a company and to CEO salaries that they refuse to publish,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow your scheme has created another mess, Taoiseach \u2013 bin-raiding. The Government has created a new phenomenon, bin scavenging. In the name of cleaning up the country, you\u2019ve incentivised people to dump the contents of bins onto the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin said the DRS had been introduced by former Green Party leader Eamon Ryan and has had \u201ca very strong impact\u201d in terms of recycling rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, there has been positives to the scheme,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, it was reported that clean-up operations following instances of bin-raiding by people scavenging for cans and bottles had cost Dublin City Council \u20ac500,000 since the introduction of the scheme in February 2024.<\/p>\n
The local authority\u2019s waste management section estimated that three hours in every 24-hour cleaning cycle were being diverted to deal with \u201cbin interference\u201d as a result of the DRS.<\/p>\n
The installation of bin surrounds specifically for the collection of these containers at a cost of \u20ac40,000 had proven to be of limited use, according to internal briefing documents.<\/p>\n
A further \u20ac115,000 had been spent replacing locks on bins at a cost of \u20ac115 per receptacle after they were broken open by people looking for containers that are worth between 15 cent and 25 cent per item.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government has been urged to reform or disband the \u201cshambolic\u201d Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) after it emerged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-468168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}