Another setback for Deposit Return Scheme
The government has been talking about introducing a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland since 2019 [1].
The British Soft Drinks Association (BSDA) explains [2] that in a DRS, consumers are charged an additional deposit fee when they purchase a drink in a single-use container. This deposit acts as an incentive to support recycling – it is redeemed when the consumer returns the empty container to a return point. Typically, retailers accept and process returns automatically through a ‘reverse vending machine’, or manually using a collection bag in store. The containers are then collected and recycled, supporting bottle-to-bottle use of materials. The BSDA supports the introduction of a GB-wide DRS.
The DRS for plastic bottles to cut marine pollution will not be in place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland until late 2024 at the earliest – six years after it was announced by the government as a key environmental policy.
Now, following a further consultation, the government announced on 26 March 2022 [3] that glass bottles will be excluded from the scheme because of safety risks associated with handling broken glass.
The Keep Britain Tidy campaign believes that the safety risks posed to the general public, and to wildlife, of smashed glass bottles remaining in the environment is a far greater safety risk than that to retailers trained to handle the material. And if consumers are able to take glass away from supermarkets then surely they are able to return it and should be incentivised to do so through a Deposit Return Scheme. [4]
They want consumers to write to their MPs to ask that they urgently reconsider that glass bottles must be included in the upcoming Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) design.