In its response to the recent Government consultation on a possible DRS, LARAC has firmly stated that a DRS in the UK should be deferred until after policies on EPR and Consistency have had a chance to work. LARAC added that deferring will also allow proper research into the full implications of a DRS in the UK.
LARAC believes there is a growing opinion that the intended policies on EPR and Consistency will bring about great changes in what we recycle and how we recycle. These will need time to bed in and show results. A DRS on top of this at the same time will cause confusion amongst the public, be expensive for producers and add a collection system that competes with kerbside collections. LARAC is concerned that a DRS may not deliver the gains required to make it viable.
Carole Taylor, Chair LARAC, said “the Voluntary Incentives Working Group stated in their recommendations to the Government that more research was needed into DRS before one was introduced in the UK. LARAC is clear in its stance that a DRS needs to be deferred while other policies are given room to be designed, implemented and produce results. Only then will we know if a DRS is right for the UK.”
Evidence drawn together by LARAC using the DRS Tool produced by Anthesis and Suez and supported by LARAC, showed that councils who submitted information saw their costs rise by an average of £126,000 if an “All In” scheme was introduced. In one county area the recycling rate was calculated to drop by an average of 3.98% across the collection authorities under an “All In” DRS. This indicates that if a DRS was introduced it will cannibalise the existing kerbside schemes, throwing doubt on the ability of a DRS to increase recycling levels nationally.
The consultation indicated that producers might not be obligated under both DRS and EPR and LARAC has raised concerns about this. DRS is just one type of collection system that an EPR in the UK would need to fund, along with household collections and commercial collections. LARAC dismisses the notion of double charging and rightly points out that if a DRS was introduced it would mean that producers pay for a variety of collection systems in line with the concept of full net cost recovery.
Read a summary of LARAC's full response
