The levy on plastic shopping bags doesn’t apply to a bag to keep raw meat separate from the rest of the food shop. Hospital gloves and syringes are “single use only” for good reason. Hygiene cannot be compromised.

The important next step is to deal properly with that waste. The best expression I’ve heard is “waste product”. The idea of treating waste the same way as you would market any product to get the best price, or in this case reduce the charge. The bring centre concept has been working well for farm plastics for many years now. It is certainly not cheap, but we are all learning that presenting waste clean and tidy reduces weight and cost.

To that end, I was delighted at the opportunity to deal with the veterinary waste that had collected on my own farm. Storage was straightforward enough. I used 20l or 25l plastic drums that originally came with oil or detergents. The EPA and Teagasc had organised a series of bring centres again this year, the one in Fermoy was where I headed.

Separation of different wastes was obviously important, as the on-site staff filled everything into clearly marked lined boxes. Treatment is so much easier and more effective when it’s known what exactly is being dealt with.

The other reality of waste is that the vast majority of it can now be reclassified as a by-product. Case in point would be whey, with modern technology it can be used for sports nutrition and other food ingredients.

The most of our hazardous waste is exported to countries that have larger volumes and hence better facilities to deal with it safely. We do, however, import a significant level of food by-products. Things like distillers grains, soya hulls and cotton seeds are in fact waste from the production of much more valuable products. Irish animals can turn these into meat and milk proteins as they work well with Irish produced grass and grain.

Despite a recent trial, though, my cows have failed to turn aluminium and plastic to milk. Whoever it was that threw a bag of rubbish into my silage field needs to learn that anything disappearing over a fence magically reappears in a feed trough. Littering really needs to be reclassified from waste to attempted animal cruelty with corresponding penalties.

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