A GALWAY city environmental campaign has called on Minister for the Environment John Gormley to “live up to Green Party credentials” by introducing a refundable charge on drink cans and bottles.
The Galway Friends of the Forest group said such a levy would “help reverse” the enormous increase in refuse “destroying Irish rivers, seas and countryside”. Spokesman Brendan Smith said an “environmental disaster” was exacerbated by cheap pricing on non-refundable cans and bottles sold in supermarkets, local shops, petrol stations and off-licences. “In Galway city, communities and the local authority have worked together for the last five months, under a scheme known as Gaillimh Suas Glan, to clean up woods and other green public spaces on a monthly basis,” Mr Smith said.
“The amount of refuse being collected is frightening. In a recent event, volunteers collected over 6,000 pieces of litter in a two-hour period from one forest area alone,” he added. Mr Smith said cans and bottles account for between 60 and 70 per cent of the items collected. The group made submissions in 2007 to the Government’s waste management review recommending legislation to implement a refundable charge on drink cans and bottles.
“However, the review’s final report, published a few months ago, failed to address this proposal in any serious way, and made some vague comment about the need for further future research,”Mr Smith said.
A spokesman for Mr Gormley said that the International Review of Waste Management consultants’ study had concluded “there was not sufficient evidence to support a recommendation to introduce such schemes”.