The Labour government has confirmed its commitment to a DRS for drinks containers. It might even be introduced sooner than we thought. By David Burrows.
Fizzled out. Will the UK ever have a deposit return scheme (DRS)? It is a question that many have asked themselves in recent years as delay has followed delay, has followed delay. The scheme is simple: a small deposit, say 20p, is placed on containers within scope and then returned when the can or bottle is. But no-one seems to agree on how to do it, or what to include.
Blame Brexit. The Scottish Parliament legislated to create a DRS in May 2020. A few months later, in December 2020, the Internal Market Act (IMA) was passed. The Act followed the UK’s departure from the EU single market and was designed to, ahem, provide “continued certainty for people and businesses that they can work and trade freely across the whole of the UK”.
Bottled it. Instead, politicians weaponised the IMA. As Scotland and Wales looked to continue to align with EU environmental rules, Westminster used the new powers to rein them in. Bans on single-use plastic items got through eventually but there has been no such luck with DRS.
Recycle (not) now. Between Scotland’s original launch date of April 1st 2021, and the last planned launch date of August 16th 2023, some 2.1 billion drink containers would already have been littered, landfilled or incinerated rather than recycled, according to circular economy platform Reloop. The pressure was piling up to get this going. “We expect to go live on August 16th [this year],” Simon Jones, chief operating officer at Circularity Scotland, the not-for-profit administrator of the DRS, told me in March 2023.
Holymood. On June 7th 2023 Holyrood admitted defeat. The launch of Scotland’s DRS would be delayed until at least October 2025 as a consequence of the UK Government’s refusal to agree a full exclusion from the IMA, said then circular economy minister Lorna Slater.The “delays and dilutions lie squarely in the hands of UK Government that has sadly seemed so far more intent on sabotaging this parliament than protecting our environment”, she claimed (that hasn’t stopped Biffa, the waste company that was set to collect the containers on a 10-year deal, suing the Scottish government for £200m).
You’re either with us… Scotland was furious that the UK Government had imposed a number of “highly significant conditions on the scheme […] and the requirement to align aspects of the scheme with schemes across the UK – none of which exist at the moment or have regulations in place”.
Shattered. One of the conditions was the exclusion of glass from the DRS. Scotland wanted glass to be in there (alongside aluminium and steel cans and PET bottles). As did Wales. And green NGOs. But the former waste minister Robbie Moore said in April this year that: “Glass containers are heavy and fragile, making them more difficult for consumers to return and receive the deposit they have paid, potentially forcing up the cost of their shopping.”
Pane in the glass. His comments came after England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales had all just agreed to delay a DRS until October 2027 so they could unify it (which many believed would have been the obvious starting point). So another delay of two years – though reports suggested some in industry wanted until 2028. The hospitality sector has remained supportive about DRS but with plenty of caveats.
No Moore. Robbie Moore is of course no longer at Defra HQ. Labour is in power and Mary Creagh, a former chair of the environmental audit committee (EAC), is the new waste minister. And she seems to want to hit the ground running. Asked whether there are plans to introduce a DRS before October 2027, Creagh said: “Yes,” before adding: “We are reviewing the suite of packaging reforms and are going to work with our devolved government counterparts, industry and other stakeholders to determine the next steps for the deposit return scheme.”
Steady on. That could mean a launch of, say, September 2027.
Mary, Mary. Creagh was heading up the EAC when it published a report on plastic bottles in 2017. The MPs explained how a DRS would capture the plastic bottles that are used on-the-go that currently escape household recycling. “We have heard that deposit return schemes for plastic bottles and cans achieve very high recycling rates,” they reported. But there was no mention of glass.
