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Dublin Live
Dublin Live
National
Thomas Telford

New levy on disposable coffee cups to be introduced

The Government plans to introduce a levy on disposable cups in an effort to reduce their usage.

Under this new levy, consumers will have to pay an extra 20c if using a disposable coffee cup.

Around 200 million coffee cups are dumped every year in Ireland.

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Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communication Ossian Smyth spoke on RTE Radio 1 this morning, confirming that the Circular Economy Bill will also pave the way for use of CCTV to combat illegal dumping and littering.

Appearing on Morning Ireland, Mr Smyth confirmed the plans and the timeline for the coffee cup levy.

"That will take about three months. They will want to make sure we are not interfering with the single market," Mr Smyth said.

"Once we get a licence to go ahead and do this I expect that will take towards the end of the year. So it will be the fourth quarter of the year before you see it (the levy) when you go into a café.

"So there will be plenty of time over the summer to get used to using a Keep Cup. I have a collapsible Keep Cup that goes flat into my pocket and also smaller ones for a flat white.

"There is a lot of practical ways to do this. It doesn't have to be a big difficulty."

"It is very similar to the plastic bag levy. So people will remember when that came in we were using a giant number of plastic bags and after the levy came in the reduction was 95 per cent in the use of plastic bags."

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