Following the announcement by the Welsh Government that it will no longer be a part of the UK-wide Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) proposed to be introduced in 2027, LARAC is urging the government to strongly consider pausing development of the scheme until other policies have come into place.
The DRS, as proposed by DEFRA, will target drinks containers made of PET plastic or aluminium. The Welsh and the Scottish Governments previously wanted to include glass contained within the scheme. Whilst the proposal suggests that DRS will help to drive up capture rates and improve quality of material, PET and aluminium drinks containers items are already successfully captured in existing kerbside infrastructure, whilst DRS fails to capture other challenging materials that drive down capture rates, whilst increasing costs to consumers and removing valuable material from local authority waste streams.
Similar to the challenges created by the Scottish Government proposal that fell through last year, the inclusion of different materials in different parts of the UK creates systemic challenges in terms of labelling and communications, as well as knock-on effects to other policies, most notably fees for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
Furthermore, the impact assessment for DRS estimated that development of the scheme would cost billions of pounds for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. With this assessment having been undertaken in 2019, this is likely to be considerably more now. On top of this, the addition of a Scottish scheme would add further cost, increased by the ongoing expense caused by the failure of its scheme last year.
Robert Lewis, LARAC’s Welsh representative, said:
“For many years, Wales has led the way in recycling rates through the UK. This has been achieved without a DRS, instead focusing on strong kerbside collections, investment in communication and engagement with citizens, and allowing local authorities the enforcement powers and flexibility to best perform, such as by deciding on residual collection frequency. For the price of DRS, this could be replicated across the whole of the UK, increasing capture and recycling rates for packaging beyond drinks containers, and even beyond packaging.”
Cathy Cook, LARAC Chair, said:
“This is the second time, following the Scottish scheme last year, that we have seen efforts to create a multi-tiered DRS within the UK, with the Internal Markets Act again cited as a key challenge, and the infrastructure both costly and ineffective at capturing what is needed to make real change to UK recycling rates.
“The Welsh exit from a UK-wide DRS should act as a wake-up call to the regulators that the current plans for DRS should be put on hold, and that the impact of other policies including EPR for packaging and Simpler Recycling (in England), should be measured before billions of pounds is invested to disrupt current infrastructure and behaviours.”
For further information please contact Toni McNamara, Executive Director, on 01982 382 650 / admin@larac.org.uk.
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