UKHospitality hailed it as a “victory” for the sector while Friends of the Earth called it a “shameful breaking of promises”. This is of course the news that Scotland’s deposit return scheme (DRS) will be delayed until March 2024, at the earliest.
In a statement to the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday, Scotland’s new first minister Humza Yousaf said he remained “committed” to the scheme but was not confident it would be ready by August.
The postponement “provides 10 months for businesses to get ready,” he said. “We will use that additional time to work with businesses, and [scheme administrator] Circularity Scotland, to address concerns with the scheme and ensure a successful launch next year. We have also developed a package of measures to simplify and de-risk the scheme, and to support small businesses and hospitality in particular,” he added. More details were due to be announced as this week’s Digest went to press.
UKHospitality welcomed the pause and review of what it sees as a “poorly designed” scheme. “The next 10 months need to be used extremely wisely and productively to make it fit-for-purpose,” said UKH Scotland executive director Leon Thompson.
Yousaf also in part blamed the UK government for “delaying the decision to exclude the scheme from the Internal Market Act”. The UK government has pencilled in 2025 for its scheme, which unlike Scotland won’t include glass.
NGO City to Sea said the delay is “disappointing” but offers a “perfect opportunity” for Westminster. “[The UK Government] could, right now, pledge to match Scottish levels of ambition in accepting glass – as [its] own consultation encouraged [it] to – and to match the new Scottish timetable,” said policy manager Steve Hynd. “Deposit return schemes work best when they are simple, universal in accepting all materials and sizes of containers, and work to actively encourage refill and reuse and not just recycling.”
Which leads us to Uber Eats which has launched a reusable packaging trial in central London. Customers can opt-in to receive their meals in reusable packaging; they then scan a QR code and select a day for collection (from as early as next day to no later than three weeks later). The trial will run for six months with a group of restaurant partners and will be managed by Again, a reusable packaging supply chain company. Participating restaurants are located within a 5km radius of Again’s facility in Kennington Park.
Various incentives will be tested throughout the trial to measure what motivates customers to engage with reusables and what motivates them to return the packaging. Again is one of six winning projects chosen by the £1.4m ‘Bring it back’ fund launched by Hubbub and Starbucks to support innovative new solutions and systems for sustainable packaging in the food and beverage industry.
Sticking with packaging, CDP has announced that its global environmental disclosure system now includes various questions and metrics relating to plastic. CDP’s plastics module – which is incorporated into the water security questionnaire – covers plastics mapping, potential impacts to the environment, business risks, and targets. There are also questions for companies with certain plastics production and use activities on total weight, raw material content, and circularity potential.
Extended disclosure on plastic packaging footprints was identified as one of five year trends this year in Footprint’s 2023 packaging report. CDP said companies face US$100 billion annual financial risk if governments require them to cover waste management costs at expected volumes and recyclability, while investments in petrochemicals and plastics worth about US$400 billion are at risk of becoming stranded assets. Near-term exposures (2022-30) to corporate liabilities from plastic-related pollution are material and likely to exceed US$20 billion too.
“The scale of the plastic pollution crisis is no secret, so it’s not good enough that many companies, investors and policymakers still lack the robust data needed to drive the rapid transformation we desperately need”, said CDP global director for water security Cate Lamb. “As mandatory environmental disclosure gathers momentum, we encourage governments to include plastics in their mandatory disclosure regimes,” she added.
And finally to carbon reporting. Just one in 40 (2.5%) of large UK companies have adopted ‘gold standard’ targets for setting a course to net-zero, according to research by the Institute for public Policy Research (IPPR). One in 20 have signed up in principle for the new ‘science-based targets initiative’ (SBTi) aimed at measuring companies’ progress, but have not actually set their targets, the report shows. A further 151 small or medium enterprises (SMEs) have signed up and fully set their own targets.
The report also highlights the “dizzying” and sometimes contradictory array of ways companies currently claim their progress towards net-zero, which IPPR says makes it easier for some companies to “greenwash” their reputations. The think-tank also wants to see further environmental targets beyond simply net-zero, to ensure that impacts on nature, biodiversity and use of resources are included in company assessments.
In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, Rishi Sunak announced new requirements for stock market listed businesses and financial firms to publish net-zero plans. A consultation on guidance for these plans has been completed but IPPR warned that little progress has been made on the regulatory framework with the government “yet to put this commitment into legislation”.
