Scottish government announces start date for DRS

The Scottish government said its deposit return scheme will go live across Scotland on 16 August 2023.

The announcement, after several delays, follows an independent review, which considered the impact of Covid-19 on the scheme.

“Implementing a scheme on this scale is a massive national undertaking involving tens of thousands of producers and retailers. Given the challenges that the pandemic and Brexit have placed upon these businesses, it is disappointing - but understandable - that the independent review concluded the original start date was no longer feasible,” Circular Economy Minister Lorna Slater said.

The Scottish DRS was set to take effect on 1 July 2022, after the government has delayed the introduction by over a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the government in March this year commissioned an independent gateway review to assess the impact of the pandemic on the go-live date for the scheme.

Addressing the parliament on Tuesday (14 December), Slater has set out plans for a phased implementation of the scheme, and said the target of achieving 90 per cent collection rates by 2024 will be maintained.

“Despite calls to water down the scheme by removing materials or waiting for other nations to catch up, we have maintained our ambition and ensured that the scheme will still meet its original target of achieving 90 per cent collection rates by 2024,” she said.

As part of the phased implementation, she said the government is working with retailers on a voluntary basis to enable people to start returning their bottles and cans for recycling from November 2022.

“We have also published a clear plan for delivery, with critical milestones on the path to full implementation. These include use of return points on a voluntary basis by retailers from November 2022,” she said.

Orkney Islands, off the northeastern coast of Scotland, will go early in offering the scheme, planning to operate a community-run scheme from November next year.

“Orkney Islands Council is committed to working with both local and national organisations to improve recycling rates and to ensure that materials are kept in use for as long as possible,” Councillor Graham Sinclair, Chair of Orkney Council's Development and Infrastructure Committee, said.

“We welcome this initiative on the return of drinks containers in Orkney and are supportive of the aims and objectives.”

The announcement of the launch date of the DRS was welcomed by trade bodies.

“After several false starts and delays, the NFRN welcomes the certainty that today’s announcement from the government brings,” Ferhan Ashiq, Scottish president of the NFRN, said.

“Now we have confirmation of a start date, retailers and Circulatory Scotland, the scheme administrator, can begin to work out what this will mean for their stores and how DRS will be incorporated into their offer to customers.

“There is much to be done, but we can now start to focus on delivering a scheme that will work for all retailers – large and small – and achieve its aim of increasing the availability of high-quality recycled plastic, metal and glass and decreasing the number of these items being discarded as litter.”

James Lowman, ACS chief executive, said: “We welcome the clarification of the timelines for the introduction of a deposit return scheme in Scotland, this will allow more time to design and implement a scheme that will be workable and effective for both businesses and consumers. This is still a tight timescale and we all have to commit to working at pace over the next twenty months.

“There are still a number of important decisions to be made around handling fees as well as addressing key operational issues around manual handling and the handling of glass bottles. We will continue to engage with the Scottish government and Circularity Scotland ahead of implementation to communicate the key priorities of our sector.”

The scheme requires people to pay a 20p deposit when they buy a drink that comes in a single-use container made of PET plastic, steel and aluminium, or glass. They will get their money back when they return the empty container to one of tens of thousands of return points.

The government said the regulations asking parliament to approve the change in go-live date will be laid today (15 December).

Slater said the legal requirement to collect at least 90 per cent of eligible containers will now have to be met in the second year of operation, not the third. This means that the scheme will still be expected to meet its original target of achieving 90% collection rates by 2024.

Key milestones for delivery of the scheme include:

• March 2022: Circularity Scotland will have signed contracts with partners to deliver its logistics, operations and IT systems
• August 2022: the public awareness campaign will be launched and counting and sorting centres will start to be built
• Summer 2022: Retailers will start rolling out the return infrastructure in earnest from next summer and the government hopes them to start using that infrastructure on a voluntary basis from November 2022.
• November 2022: Orkney will see the launch of a community-run return scheme.
• January 2023: Circularity Scotland and SEPA will begin the process to register producers.
• July 2023: There will be end-to-end testing of containers through the system.