Chapter 1: What is the impact of Dublin's decision to ban plastic waste bags?
John Gibbons, I see Dublin City Council is going to ban plastic waste bags. I presume these are the big waste bags into which you put and have for collection by the bin collectors. All over about 110 streets on the north side of Dublin City. How good an idea is this? How workable is it?
Well, I think, first of all, I'm astonished in 2026, Matt, that we're still allowing businesses and other users to put out regular plastic bags. These are long since gone. For example, for most people listening to us today, we'll have been using wheelie bins for years. And they make perfect sense. They allow us, number one, of course, to sort our refuse into different categories.
But secondly, they also, of course, prevent foxes and seagulls and so on from spreading waste all around the place. And you see this walking through the city centre any time now. just birds and so on, pecking open bags. And that's not their fault. They're obviously going to do that.
Chapter 2: How effective are wheelie bins compared to plastic bags for waste management?
But it's just such a strange idea that here we are trialling this now as if this is something new. I mean, for example, many of your listeners will have seen in continental Europe, you have...
underground containers for rubbish so what looks like a regular opening but in fact when it's emptied instead of going into a single bin it drops into an underground container a truck then comes along and removes the entire underground container so the idea is that you don't have all these bags lying around you can put everything into this but they're put underground so they're kept away so yeah
You see, I think the fear that the authorities have is that if you were to have those type of things, then people, instead of paying for their domestic waste collection, would bring their bags to there and just dump them in alongside all of the businesses. So it becomes a commercial decision.
I think that that is probably the case. But CCTV would sort that out quick enough, Matt. You monitor these, and if people are abusing them in that way, then you can chase them up with CCTV.
So basically for businesses, businesses should have some sort of passes to unlock these bins and then be able to put in their waste each night, say, after they've done their work.
Precisely, like a smart card that would allow them access. And obviously they would pay by weight. I assume that's how it should work. But the key thing is we shouldn't have rubbish, bagged rubbish floating around our city centres. It's obviously unhygienic. And secondly, it's an absolute mess from a point of view of tourism.
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Chapter 3: What alternative waste disposal solutions are being considered in Dublin?
Well, apparently this is going to be available in these 110 streets covered. There will be compactors to accept the waste bags and it will be from residents as well as from businesses.
Good. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm assuming, therefore, that in these areas, residents don't currently have... wheelie bins so therefore these are moving directly to replace or at least to give an alternative to either residents or business people to simply leaving out your rubbish which again is something in this day and age we really shouldn't be doing.
Okay. Now, you want to talk about a poll that's been done into what people know about environmental issues. A poll done by DOCUS, is it?
That's right, yeah. And they surveyed it. It's quite a large sample, Matt. Over 2,000 people have been surveyed in this. And I suppose a few interesting things came out of it. Number one, they find that for Irish people, the number one concern, climatically wise, is climate. That's probably not unexpected.
Now, I would say, I suppose the focus of DOCUS, if I can put it that way, is overseas aid and so on. And they do make the point that the top three personal concerns for Irish people in order of priority are number one. war, conflict and terrorism, which is 52%, is actually up 7%. Now, that's not a surprise. That's since 2023. Economic insecurity is 42% and then migration, immigration, etc.
at 41% is actually down slightly. Now, Again, climate doesn't make these top lists. It tends to be one of these ongoing crises that sort of comes in and out of the news a lot. And as we know, climate has really been pushed out of the news cycle very heavily by whether it's warfare or political crisis over the last two to three years.
Really, since COVID, climate has struggled to actually find its way back onto the agenda. Not on the last one. Well, apart from the last word, but we've seen this, that year after year we're getting the Copernicus climate reports showing that Europe is heating up at twice the speed of the world.
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Chapter 4: What recent poll reveals about Irish people's concerns regarding environmental issues?
Yet, how that reflects in how people feel about it, I suppose that's what they wanted to look at. So, the survey map, they said half of the Irish public said that they somewhat have already felt the effects of climate change. And about one in three said that they don't believe they felt them at all.
But what has changed again since 2023 is that about 10% more people believe it will now affect them personally compared to three years ago. That's quite a sharp shift.
I'd be cynical. It affects them personally in that they're paying carbon taxes personally.
Yeah, that wasn't the focus of the question. I think they meant the climate impacts. Now, on the other side of that, so the type of things that people are supportive of won't come as a great surprise. So, for example, 37% are in favour of renewable energy, aren't we all? Stricter regulation? No, only 37% are, John. Well, okay, okay. Well, no, they want more done on it, right? Incentivising it.
Yeah, they want more done, stronger incentives, etc., etc., push for renewable energy. I'd say the actual public support for renewable energy in Ireland, I suspect, is probably cresting 90%, Matt. There's very few holdouts on that at this stage. Stricter regulation on high emitting activities such as data centres and private jets.
The thing about that is everybody is opposed to private jets because, of course, very few of us will ever be on a private jet. But when you come to asking people about their own behaviour, it's a different story. So, for example, support for a ban on fossil fuels, 15%. Support for changing our food systems, 12%.
And taxing air travel that affects you, in other words, not the private jet guy, but you, 15%. So changes that would be climate positive, whether it's in the food system, fossil fuels or aviation, are not popular. So it is one of those things, Matt, it's, you know, the old slogan that sort of, you know, we all want to change. We all want change, but nobody wants to change.
Okay, listener comments. As somebody who lives in Dublin city centre, it's down eight steps to my apartment with no space for a wheelie bin.
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Chapter 5: How do Irish people's priorities reflect on climate change and other global issues?
I have to rely on bags on the street. Not everyone has a driveway. I fully understand that, listener. I think the thing is that they should have somewhere where they could be able to bring the bags rather than leaving them out on the steps.
That again is where you see it in cities like Paris and Brussels, where they have these subterranean collection points that are huge. They're almost the size of a shipping container, a small shipping container. And you simply drop your stuff into that and they're collected at night routinely.
Well, listeners say, no, he wants big diesel trucks in the city. He might make his mind up. They don't have to be diesel trucks.
They can be electric vehicles. Of course they can be electric trucks. In fact, if your listener is following what's happening in China, electric trucks are, electric HGVs, heavy goods vehicles, are wiping the floor with diesels in China. And what happens in China today will happen here tomorrow.
Okay. David Attenborough is 100 tomorrow. Is he one of your heroes?
Absolutely. I think, you know, everybody of, yeah, he's an amazing figure. And his life, I suppose, has spanned probably, arguably, the most consequential century in certainly in the last 5000 years from the point of view of the Earthlings. systems. There have been more changes have occurred in that century than at any time in the previous 5,000 years.
Now, for example, when David Attenborough was 10, back in 1936, at that time, Matt, two-thirds of the world was still unspoiled wilderness. Two-thirds. And he has, as a natural science broadcaster and communicator, he has brought the wonders of the natural world into people's living rooms. He produced nine series. He's won countless awards.
And he conveyed the magic and the majesty and the mystery and the sheer brilliance of nature and the natural world. And he brought that to life into people's living rooms.
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Chapter 6: What has David Attenborough's career contributed to environmental awareness?
But at a certain point... in his career, in his brilliant career, he kind of began to notice that things were changing and changing very, very badly and very, very quickly. For example, he had noted that areas that he went to in, you know, for example, in Borneo or Madagascar, where he would have filmed, you know, a documentary, he realised that the very valley that he...
himself and his BBC crew had filmed in, is now gone. It's now palm oil plantations. And the pressure was on, probably from the BBC, because naturally everybody likes nice pictures and everybody likes to think that nature and the natural world is doing well. Why wouldn't we? And Attenborough was conveying the message of the continuation and a thriving nature.
And at a certain point, Matt, I think he came to realise that, in fact, the message that he was bringing back to the public was, in fact... certainly incomplete and arguably misleading because he wasn't telling them about the destruction of nature. So probably since about he turned 80, he's focused to a huge extent on the climate emergency and also on biodiversity breakdown.
And he's done so, for example, one of his series, he had a special episode particularly on climate change and it was removed from the US version of his series because it was considered to be, quote, political, unquote.
So that's the kind of headwinds that broadcasters like him run into, where as soon as you try to discuss the reasons, for example, why climate systems are breaking down, the reasons why biodiversity is in crisis, then suddenly it's political.
So I give him enormous credit because he has made the living world, the natural world, I suppose, palpable and tangible to millions of people around the world. He's given people a genuine love for nature and the The real challenge for us to bring forward his legacy is how on earth do we protect that, which he has explained to us so well.
Okay, Blue Planet 2 would have looked very much at the scourge of plastic in the ocean. Another listener says, Ocean with David Attenbury is a powerful documentary. He highlights how we are destroying our oceans with overfishing. And you want to get back to bottom trawling, one of your favourite topics to finish.
Yes, indeed, Matt. This again, I suppose, goes... It's something we've covered here from time to time, but this is a very recent survey which looked at the impacts of bottom trawling across Europe. Maybe I should start briefly by explaining what we mean by bottom trawling. These are where heavy trawlers drag heavy metal gear... They've been described as large as up to 12 jumbo jets in width.
So huge metal gear pulled, dragged across the ocean floor. And the idea with this is that you dig up various invertebrates, clams and so on that are nesting and... their habitats are on the sea floor. So you dig them out. And these things are like gigantic industrial rakes scraping the sea floor.
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Chapter 7: How has climate change affected public perception in Ireland since 2023?
Now, if we were doing this, Matt, in a rainforest, there would be a hue and cry. It would be the equivalent of carpet bombing a rainforest. But what we have instead are fleets. of trawlers heavily subsidised over a billion euros in taxpayer subsidies to keep fuel, diesel oil cheap for these trawlers to allow them to absolutely devastate our ocean floors.
And the real thing about bottom trawling is it doesn't just destroy... marine ecosystems, it also destroys the livelihoods of many small fishermen who are finding that the nesting grounds and the habitats for the fish that they depend on are being destroyed by bottom trawling. And when an area mat has been bottom trawled, it is likely to be sterile for maybe 50, possibly 100 years after it.
And this is happening on a widespread industrial scale. And as a side consequence of all this, there's huge releases of carbon dioxide because Organic material floats to the bottom of the sea in the normal course of life in the ocean and it settles there and that takes huge amounts of carbon out of the system.
These bottom trawlers, by digging up the ocean floor, they mix that CO2, that carbon, back into the water and much of it vents off in the form of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The impact of bottom trawling has been calculated to, in terms of its environmental damage, to be 90 times greater than the entire profits made by this industry.
And it's a classic example of us subsidising the wrong things. What we need is a ban on bottom trawling, and we have a huge problem with it here in Ireland as well. We need a ban on bottom trawling, but particularly in our so-called marine protected areas, Matt. And it's a crime, really, that we continue to allow this... absolutely destructive practice to continue.
John Gibbons, as ever, thank you.
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