An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
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Linda Nelson Murray (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I commend my hometown of Navan, which for a good few years never really did very well when it came to the Anti-Litter League. A very progressive new Tidy Towns committee has been set up in Navan. I cannot take any credit for it. I have not even been out with them. I hope to get out with them in the future. We have moved from being No. 30 in the anti-litter league table last year up to No. 18 this year. It is the first round and then they go back and look at it again. I want to commend Navan because we have another lovely sister town in my constituency called Trim that is spotless and wins many awards. I am delighted that the capital town of Navan has come up to No. 18.
That being said, I am going to tell Members about something that once they see it, they will not be able to unsee it. I refer to the little white stickers from disposable vapes that are on every single bin across Ireland. It is absolutely soul-destroying to see them. They are tiny little ones from disposable vapes, they are hugely unsightly and they make the areas that people are trying to keep clean look very dirty.
They are very hard to get off the bins. I raised this issue when I was a county councillor. Instead of a "Bin your gum" campaign, we could launch a "Bin your sticker from the vapes" campaign. Maybe we need to look at holding the manufacturers to account and make them come up with a way to ensure these little stickers are not part of the packaging. It is kind of like the stickers that are on Pink Lady apples. It is the only apple I know that has a sticker on it and you kind of wonder what to do with it. People genuinely put the vape packaging in the bin but it is this one little sticker they stick to pipes, walls and bins. We need to do something about it because it is dreadful and impossible to get off. We need to hold the producers responsible. Maybe they need to contribute to the cost. We need to run a public campaign to let people know not to do this. When people see the stickers on other things, they tend to put them on themselves. Could we ask the Minister for the environment to have a look at this and how we can hold the producers to account? Can we run a campaign about this? With all of the hard work that Tidy Towns committees are doing around the country, the last thing we need to see is a bin like this covered in white vape stickers.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-10