Deposit Return Scheme FAQS

You helped us campaign for Deposit Return Schemes (DRS). But why are they important? DRS expert Clarissa Morawski is here to answer some FAQs about the scheme.

Clarissa Morawski is CEO of an organisation called Reloop.

Reloop works at the intersection of governments, industry stakeholders and NGOs who share a common vision of a successful circular economy. Their mission and values are focused on building a world free of pollution, where resources remain resources.

The date for the DRS to go live in Scotland has been delayed to 2025. With Scotland’s DRS having been delayed, and different schemes launching for different parts of the UK at different times, we thought we would ask Clarissa to help break it down for us.

Deposit Return Schemes have a direct impact on climate because they create a guaranteed source of high-quality material by recycling bottles back into bottles, and cans back into cans. With less demand for gathering new, raw materials, our carbon emissions are reduced.

Reloop has modelled the impact that moving to a 90% collection and recycling rate would have, versus remaining at the status quo in EU countries. For example, if Spain were to move gradually towards achieving a 90% collection rate for recycling and maximised circularity by 2029, Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) converters could reduce their demand for 347kt of virgin PET over that period.

Reduced demand would be equal to the weight of 14.5 billion PET (plastic) bottles, enough to line the perimeter of Spain 526 times.

By preventing the need to produce virgin PET, this offers an emissions reduction of over 760kt of CO2e.

Over 25 years, Zero Waste Scotland estimates that Scotland’s DRS would reduce emissions by around 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Scotland’s DRS, which was originally due to start in April 2021, has now been delayed until 16th August 2023. When it starts, it will be the first DRS in the UK. Customers will pay a 20p deposit on any drink they buy in a glass or PET plastic bottle, as well as all metal cans. They’ll be able to get their 20p back by returning the empty containers to any shop that sells these types of drinks.

The start date for DRS in the rest of the UK is likely to be 2024 at the earliest. The Welsh scheme will include glass and PET plastic bottles, as well as cans - just like Scotland. However, the schemes in Northern Ireland and England will only accept PET plastic bottles and cans.

The introduction of DRS in Scotland has taken a lot longer than it does in most places around the world. In most countries, governments do their research, look at the existing best-in-class systems, introduce regulations and keep things moving forward.

Both Slovakia and Latvia, for example, have new DRS that went live at the start of this year, having both introduced legislation in the autumn of 2019. Scotland finalised its legislation just a few months after these countries, but the scheme’s start date has already been delayed twice and is now not due to start for more than a year.

Meanwhile, Reloop has just heard that Turkey’s system will go live in June 2023. This will become the largest DRS country in the world, overtaking Germany in terms of the number of people who will have access to it.

With all of this global progress, it does raise questions about why Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme has been delayed twice. It seems, unfortunately, that political decision makers are bowing to industry pressure to slow things down, or even stop it from happening entirely. We certainly hope to be proven wrong!

Credit: Natasha Ewins

It’s disappointing to see that only some parts of the UK will include glass in their DRS. In truth, glass is such a high energy material compared to all the other ones, so it really should go back and be reused, or recycled back into bottles at the very least.

Although glass is currently collected through kerb side systems in the UK, this provision is inconsistent and it’s unlikely that the glass bottles are currently being recycled back into glass bottles. When glass is collected as part of a stream of mixed materials, it's not often possible to recycle glass bottles back into glass bottles.

Instead, it can be used as part of a range of products including concrete and glasphalt (for roads).

Kerb side glass collection is far from universal in the UK. Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland (APRS) research showed that 43% of Scottish households do not have kerb side glass collection.

When glass bottles are collected through DRS, they can be part of a circular system, which is by far the most energy efficient way to use glass for beverage packaging. Including glass bottles in DRS for single-use packaging is a gateway to having a system that includes refillable bottles. If we're already managing glass in DRS, we then have opportunities to share that existing infrastructure for refillable bottles.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is simply a policy that shifts the burden of responsibility for product packaging, both financially and sometimes operationally, to the producer. Deposit return is a type of EPR, which is typically used for beverage containers. Evidence from all over the world shows that beverage containers are a significant part of the litter stream, and charging a deposit on them provides an economic incentive for people to return them. Today, the vast majority of deposit return schemes in the world are operating as dedicated beverage EPR programmes.

In addition to beverage containers, governments still need to collect more, and sort more.

We need proper household collection systems that are highly efficient, that collect and use sorting technology so that everything isn’t sent to an incinerator. We need to get that material back into the brand owner's hands, so they can make their products from recycled materials and stop digging into the ground for more resources.

Governments and industry need to make investments in collecting and sorting technology, because without that we can’t make more products from recycled material.

These systems work. Brands are improving their image by reducing branded litter polluting the environment. They’re also reducing their requirement for virgin plastic and proudly making higher recycled content containers.

One thing I can tell you is that the industry has really strong lobbyists and some industries - whether right or wrong - are going to fight against DRS. Whether they’re opposed to schemes with return to retail, or they’re trying to exclude glass from the system. But, once these schemes are introduced properly, opposition just completely disappears. We’ve seen this happen in multiple countries.

Decision makers need to be bold and recognise that the government has a role to set recycling targets and enforce meaningful penalties. Proper penalties are key to ensuring industry participation.