One of the products of the co-operation between the Greens and the SNP was supposed to be a deposit return scheme for drinks bottles and cans. Inherited from the previous SNP government the scheme was delayed several times but was supposed to go live in mid-August last year. Now the UK Government have scuppered it for the second time.
For the last eight months we should have been able to take cans, and glass and plastic drinks bottles to shops or collection machines and get back the 20p deposit we had paid when we bought them. These kinds of scheme are common in Europe and the US, and most have been running successfully for many years. They are a popular and polling in Scotland showed strong support here too.
Green Minister Lorna Slater was given the job of delivering the scheme, the legislation for which had been passed in the previous parliamentary session. What she inherited was a muddled mess but the several times I talked to her about it she seemed very clear on what needed to be fixed.
By the start of last year, the scheme was fully developed and a new organisation had been created to run the return system. By the end of the first year the scheme was expected to have increased recycling rates for bottles and cans to 90%, with 34,000 fewer bottles becoming litter every day. It would reduce waste, lower climate emissions and tackle a major source of litter in urban and rural areas.
So why are we not living in this exciting new world ?
Because the UK government decided to put a stop to it. Using the post-Brexit Internal Markets Act they said that Scotland could not proceed with a scheme including glass and we should wait for an English scheme to start in October 2025. This was to allow the two schemes to be synchronised. This made the Scottish scheme unworkable, so it was postponed and the scheme administrators went bust.
The DRS had become a political football. The UK had had six years to raise any objections and their own environment spokesperson in Scotland previously supporting the inclusion of glass. But suddenly glass was a problem.
At the time some of us expressed some scepticism about the UK scheme. It emerged last week that the UK scheme is now not expected to be up and running until 2027. Industry insiders are saying it will be more like late 2028. UK ministers blamed this delay on the Welsh for insisting that they include, yes, you guessed it, glass, in their scheme. Welsh ministers accused the UK government of trying to water down the scheme across the UK.
Of course the 2027 or 2028 date is a pretty meaningless promise since it is after the coming UK election and likely to move again. At the UK level Labour have said that a DRS is a good idea in principle but not said when they might have one up and running.
The Bute House Agreement promised many things, some delivered, some failed and some now never to be attempted. The Deposit Return Scheme is going to have to wait for longer, the victim of continuing political games.
A version of this article appeared in the Scotsman newspaper on 1st May 2024.