Living with less plastic in Ireland

Under the EU's Single-Use Plastics Directive, Ireland faces a specific, binding checkpoint: 77 percent of plastic drink bottles must be collected for recycling by 2025, rising further to 90 percent by 2029. Those aren't aspirational figures - they're legal targets, and Ireland's newly launched Deposit Return Scheme is effectively the …

In 2001, Ireland introduced a modest-sounding policy: a 22-cent charge on every disposable plastic bag handed out at checkout. More than two decades later, it's still routinely cited as one of the single biggest environmental behaviour shifts the country has ever experienced - a small fee that quietly rewired a …