Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that he was more than happy to give his support to the effort to ban microbeads and micro-plastics which are extremely hazardous to our environment.<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD was commenting on the Prohibition of Micro-Plastics Bill 2016 which was recently debated in the D\u00e1il.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to warmly welcome this Bill by Se\u00e1n Sherlock TD and am more than happy to support such an initiative aimed at reducing the huge amount of plastic entering our oceans.<\/p>\n
\u201cSinn F\u00e9in has continually highlighted the problem of micro-plastics, and I would like to thank my party colleague Lynn Boylan MEP for her work on the issue in the European Parliament.<\/p>\n
\u201cMicrobeads and micro-plastics are so small they cannot be filtered out during water treatment and end up in our rivers and oceans. These tiny pieces of plastic are then eaten by marine life and can end up in the human food chain. Their effects on human health are still unknown, but it does not take an award winning scientist to recognise that their side effects are not conducive to a healthy body.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvidence has shown that for each shower taken using products containing microbeads, up to 100,000 pieces of plastic can end up entering the ocean.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn December 2015, former US President Obama signed the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 to phase out the use of micro-plastics in personal care products.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Canada, microbeads have been added to their list of Toxic Substances and in Britain the Government there\u00a0have also announced plans to ban microbeads in cosmetic products.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a growing international trend and Ireland should not be left behind with this progressive move towards removing these harmful pieces of plastic that cannot degrade in the environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cFine Gael and Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s rejection of a previous piece of legislation brought forward by the Green Party last year was disappointing. They failed to give any rational argument as to why Ireland should not proceed ahead with\u00a0a similar ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cCiting EU rules is a worn out excuse, as the European Commission has already said to the British government that it can proceed to introduce their ban on microbeads and explicitly stating that \u2018a ban on certain substances on environmental grounds could also be compatible with the internal market.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cFianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael\u2019s joint decision to abstain on the vote on this Bill is an improvement on their previous position, but unsurprisingly they remain at the back of the queue when it comes to forward thinking on the environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are alternatives to micro beads currently available but because of the cost factor, or some other reason, the cosmetic industry seems reluctant to voluntarily move way from micro-plastics and it\u2019s long past the time that manufacturers were forced to use more environmentally friendly ingredients in their products.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis Bill provides a simple solution to an avoidable and growing environment problem and I was happy to support it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that he was more than happy to give his support to the effort to ban microbeads and micro-plastics which are extremely hazardous to our environment. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD was commenting on the Prohibition of Micro-Plastics Bill 2016 which was recently debated in the D\u00e1il. Deputy Se\u00e1n […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,317],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-micro-plastics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3118,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117\/revisions\/3118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}