Chapter 1: What unexpected behaviors have emerged from the Deposit Return Scheme?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance. The bin situation and the deposit return scheme. This is something I have to say that I hadn't necessarily been aware of, but you kind of would expect it to happen. Martina Devlin, novelist and Irish independent columnist is with us. Martina, you had a bottle on a table. What happened?
Well, I just finished it. I was sitting outdoors at a cafe in the city centre in Dublin. It was early afternoon and I was chatting with a friend over coffee. And all of a sudden, an arm reached out across my line of vision and seized something from our table. And of course, I immediately thought, oh, my God, I've been robbed.
I started patting my pockets and the seat from my phone or my bag, you know, quite easily. But to my relief, both were untouched. So I looked around to see what had been taken. And it was a just finished bottle of water.
Chapter 2: How did a casual cafe experience highlight the value of discarded bottles?
And it was now in the hand of a young man in T-shirt and jeans who was walking along the pavement. And he was scanning other tables. And my friend and I laughed. I said, well, look, at least he's recycling. But it did seem brazen. I mean, he hadn't waited for us to leave the table. He was helping himself on the hoof. Now, look, you know, compared to what can happen.
in sitting about in the city, it wasn't an issue, but the snatch told me something that I'd known in theory, but hadn't really thought about in practice, which was that these plastic bottles and cans, which are suitable for the deposit return scheme, have a direct monetary value and people are collecting them for that purpose.
It's 15 cents, Martina. And the funny thing about this is you wouldn't give 15 cents to someone who's begging on the street because you would probably deem that to be too paltry a figure.
Absolutely, or I wouldn't even have the cash.
You would have the 15, correct. But obviously that 15 cents may not have been valuable to you. I'm not sure if you would have recycled that particular bottle.
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Chapter 3: What monetary value do bottles and cans hold in the context of recycling?
Well, I would have recycled it. I would have if I could. But if you're sitting at a cafe sometimes... It's going to be picked up.
Yeah, it's going to be picked up by the staff there who will recycle it hopefully on the back end.
That's what you'd hope, absolutely. But, you know, the fact is 15 cent doesn't sound much to us. But if someone picks up 20 or 30 of those bottles and cans, you know, it can mount up. And I live near Dun Laoghaire Pier and I have noticed young people, and I don't know why it is young people, maybe they're more entrepreneurial, walk up and down the pier with carrier bags now, lifting things.
the bottles and cans which are on the outside of, you know, the trays on the outside of these remodeled bins.
So they have a lot... Brilliantly described earlier on by somebody as a garter, which I mean, it makes sense that they would call it a garter, but that's not the word I would have used for them.
I don't know you could do much pinging there.
Probably not. But I suppose, is this a good or a bad thing, Martina? I'm on the record saying I do not like the deposit return scheme. I had been recycling all of my bottles and cans anyway. And now I have an entire micro system has been built up around this thing that you have to go in and put all the bottles in one by one. And it's inconvenient.
This seems to be kind of another side effect that we hadn't thought of that. People, whether they're doing it for financial gain or whether they're doing it to get the money that they need to survive, are taking these bottles and are indeed whipping them from people who are sitting out having a drink in a cafe.
Well, I think it's a good thing in general. The scheme has led to much more recycling. More than two and a half billion cans and bottles have been returned for recycling. Recycling since was rolled out in 2024 and schools and community groups and other organisations have also raised money for good causes through collections. I suppose it's the law of unintended consequences is the issue.
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Chapter 4: How are young people engaging with the Deposit Return Scheme in urban areas?
Whatever about the beaches that were left in a terrible condition after the sunshine? earlier this week. You know, this is happening in the city centre. This is happening in towns. And interestingly, a listener has said, you mentioned Dunleary, Martina, regular sightings of people with replica keys to open bins and scavenge in Dunleary.
So not only are they kind of rummaging through the top of the bin, they're actually getting a key that the council worker would use to open the bin and go through it for the sake of a few shillings.
I mean, certainly there are questions as well over the tens of millions of euro in deposits that have gone unredeemed, as you say, because it's not convenient for people if they're, you know, in a situation where they don't have anywhere to return the bottle, perhaps when they're socialising. So return the not-for-profit operator. has all this unredeemed money.
Surely that should go to Dublin City Centre to help keep the capital clean. I mean, it's meant to be a not-for-profit.
Tina, don't be coming in with your good ideas now and expecting the local authorities to take them on board. Stay with us because I want to bring in Shane Gleeson who runs a number of spa shops across Limerick. Good to talk to you again, Shane. How are you?
I'm very well, Jonathan. Thank you very much.
You have experienced this at first hand as well, have you?
We have. We've had several incidents. As Martina said, a lot of it works OK. But then we have people that come along, pull our plastic bags out of the bins, use a knife or scissors to slice open the bags to get at the plastic bottles. And we had an incident recently where I went out with a forecourt and I was on the forecourt. The guy pulled the bag out, sliced it open.
I went over and asked him to leave. And then he's fronting up to me face to face and then I realise he's got scissors in his hand. No, I don't think he had any intention to do anything with it, but still I was somewhat scared, I suppose.
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Chapter 5: What unintended consequences have arisen from the Deposit Return Scheme?
Has it just been thrown around?
just left thrown all over the forecourt. And this is happening four or five times a day. So we have to have regular staff out there. We change the bins, we put in stronger ones, and then they brought tools with them to pry open the bins. So at this stage, we're not quite sure what to do. Can I ask another question?
Do they have the audacity then to use the deposit return machines in your shop to try and claim the money back or do they bring the bottles elsewhere?
No, he did head elsewhere, to be honest. He had a big plastic bag over his back and eventually he left the place. But in another shop inside in town, in fairness, the council came up with a good solution for us.
We had people dumpster diving, so they were literally jumping into the big ones, throwing all the sacks out onto the street, slicing open the bags, leaving, you know, 15, 20 bags worth of rubbish on the ground. And in fairness, the local council worked with us and they created a steel wall in the alleyway so we could put them behind closed doors. So that did work.
So you had to create a prison for plastic?
We did have to, yes. Otherwise you're left with, and obviously if you have 15 bags of rubbish in a lane overnight, you're going to draw the undesirable four-legged things. So you don't want rats or anything like that around the place. So you have to stop it. You have to prevent it happening.
It's the law of unintended consequences. It is the law of unintended consequences here, isn't it? I mean, that's what we're dealing with. That this initiative was, as Martino correctly said, designed to get this PET plastic recycled and reused so we're not, you know, burning dead dinosaurs or taking oil out of the ground or whatever we're doing. But now the human element is...
It means that people are doing this because this is a way to make money.
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Chapter 6: How has littering and public cleanliness been affected by scavenging behaviors?
It's just a pity some people take it to extremes. We have the steel city bins around the city and they all have the tool now to open those bins. So they open the city ones and put out the bins to go through them as well. Now, not everybody throws rubbish around the grounds at just an element of it. But we'd have guys open the steel bin outside our shop five, six times every day.
Now four or five of them will just close the bin and put it back. But then you have the odd fella that'll pull it out, throw it on the ground to open it. And then we're left with having to clean it up all the time.
I mean, it's technically, it's not stealing because you're taking stuff out of the bin. Do you see it as stealing?
I don't really. It's littering, I suppose, more than anything. Like in the shop in Punch's Cross, we have another issue. We have a wall around the bin area in that shop, and they jump the wall, which is somewhat dangerous, and they're going into the big wheelie bins. Actually, they don't know if there's broken glass, whatever, inside of it.
So then I'm probably responsible if they cut themselves.
I was just going to say, if they cut themselves on the broken glass, then it's going to be Shane Gleeson's problem, isn't it?
Probably. No, nobody sued me or anything like that for it yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. But we don't know what to do completely. Now, the solution the council found for us in the city was very good, but that's a big expense to have to go to. And if that has to be replicated all over the country, that won't be cheap.
No, it's certainly not going to be cheap. Shane Gleeson, owner of a few spa shops in Limerick. Thank you for that. Martina, back to you, Martina Devlin. I suppose let's ask ourselves why people are doing this. It's not because they love rummaging through bins. It's presumably because this is a way to make a few bob.
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Chapter 7: What challenges do shop owners face due to increased scavenging?
Are we dealing with people who might have addiction problems? Are we dealing with chancers? I mean, who are we dealing with here? Who was the person who robbed your bottle?
Well, I mean, I said earlier that they're from the poorest hero society, and I think that's the case often. But the person who lifted from our table was well enough dressed and young, and I think He just saw a handy way to make money. And I don't have a problem with that if the materials are recycled because we do need to do recycling.
And I think as well, you know, the question of littering is really the main issue for most people. You know, it's an eyesore and it's potentially a public health hazard. But what I would say is that scavengers and random rummagers are easier to blame, right? than the general public for littering. But, you know, we Irish are fairly dirty and lazy about it.
And one example is the bins we were talking about, the garter, as you so evocatively described it.
Great. I'm going to use that from now on. It's shocking.
I just can't get it out of my head now every time I look at these and spin them. You know, these modified bins with the external shelves are a really good idea, but members of the public are the ones causing problems with it, not from the poorest tiers of society and not with addiction issues. They're using those trays for discarded coffee cups and fast food cartons.
They're stubbing out their cigarettes there. I've seen chewing gum jammed into them. And meanwhile, there's no space then for the items for which they're intended. You know, they end up jammed into overflowing bins and tossed aside. So people really, you know, we need to do work to address our own antisocial behaviour as well as that of scavengers.
Absolutely. Well, are we not the greatest scavengers of all the human race? Dr. Martina Devlin, novelist and columnist with the Indo. Thank you very much for joining us on that. There is an irony, of course, that just as Dublin City Council gets to grips with the plastic bags that the seagulls used to rip through.
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Chapter 8: How can we address the issues related to littering and recycling in our communities?
spilling rubbish out onto the street and causing a mess, that it's the humans who are doing it now instead, with this opening of bins and going through them and rifling through them for plastic bottles. Loads of text on this. The deposit return scheme, says a listener, is yet another example of something that works well abroad, spawning a myriad of unprecedented and unexpected consequence here.
If we can't change our culture, all solutions sourced overseas should have a paddy factor applied to their evaluation process. The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance.
Weekday mornings at 9. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts.