PRESS RELEASE 19 NOVEMBER 2024

TIME TO GIVE UP ON DRS FOLLY

The Recycling Association has said that now would be a perfect opportunity to abandon the unnecessary deposit return scheme (DRS) proposed by the UK government.

Following the announcement yesterday that it is not possible for the Welsh Government to work with the rest of the UK on a DRS, and that it intends to introduce its own eventually, The Recycling Association said that DRS has been a disaster from start-to-finish.

The Recycling Association chief executive Paul Sanderson said: "The only people who want a DRS are the soft drinks manufacturers and politicians.

"All of this chaos and years of getting nowhere and still we are talking about when it will be introduced.

"With Wales pulling out of the UK DRS, now is the perfect time to abandon this folly. Instead, let's focus on introducing the important Extended Producer Responsibility and Simpler Recycling regimes.

"Since the late 1990s, we've encouraged the public to recycle at home, but DRS will require them to change this behaviour and take them to the supermarket instead. Who wants to do that when they have a perfectly good recycling scheme at home already?

"A majority of people already put their bottles and cans in their domestic recycling, and it would seem unlikely that a deposit will incentivise those who are already too lazy to recycle to visit the reverse vending machine at the supermarket.

"We are also concerned about the impact this will have on jobs. Successful businesses that collect cans and bottles at the moment will most likely need to enter DRS tenders and potentially lose out to the bid winner, who will have to give first right of refusal to the producers of this material.

"DRS might have made sense 20 years or so ago when we were ramping up recycling in the UK. But let's focus on reforms that will make a difference now, rather than on a scheme that very few in the value chain actually want."