By the time you read this, there’s a good chance a room full of people are discussing deposit return schemes in great detail at the Deposit Return Scheme Conference.
And to be fair, we’ve become very good at talking about DRS. The models are well understood, the success stories well rehearsed, and the ambition is clear. If you spend any time in this space, it can start to feel less like a question of if it works, and more like a question of how quickly we can make it happen.
The real question, however, isn’t whether DRS works, it’s whether it works in a system as mature and entrenched as ours, and on the timeline we’ve set.
Having spent years in the waste and resources sector across various roles, I’ve developed what my better half describes as an unhealthy interest in bins and materials. I know I’m not the only one who takes photos of different receptacles on holiday. As a result, I’ve got a decent grasp of the many moving parts, and actors, at play.
A lot of the examples we point to began in countries where deposit return schemes have existed from the inception of their waste systems, shaping behaviour and infrastructure over time. The UK is different. We already have mature kerbside collections where many of the items in scope are already routinely collected and recycled.
That doesn’t mean such a system has no role to play. But it does mean we should be honest about what it is likely to deliver. We may be investing heavily to improve something that, in parts of the system at least, is already working reasonably well, with something that has a limited impactful return.
Then there is the unavoidable issue of cost, a topic that makes even the most enthusiastic and “binfluential” amongst us a little more cautious.
In theory, deposits are returned, high-quality material is captured and no one loses out.
In practice, it is rarely that neat and simple. Experience from Ireland shows that tens of millions of Euros in deposits remain unclaimed (~€65million to be exact), a big chunk of change for a regime that is supposed to be cost-neutral. Even in systems where there is a stronger financial incentive to return containers, a significant proportion simply do not make their way back to the reverse vending machines.
At a time when the cost of living remains front of mind, it is worth asking who ultimately carries that financial burden, with additional costs quietly finding their way into the average weekly shop during a checkout squeeze.
If we step away from the policy and theory and just go for a walk; through a park, along a roadside, past a train station. What are you actually seeing?
In my experience, it’s not gutters, verges and bushes full of discarded PET and aluminium drinks containers, despite what our neatly modelled assumptions might suggest. It’s cigarette butts. It’s vapes, and the packaging they come in. It’s crisp packets, sweet wrappers, fast-food packaging and the occasional NO₂ canister for good measure.
Which makes you think about what we’re actually trying to do here, and whether we’ve just fallen in love with the elegance of a solution from decades past, more than the reality of the actual issue.
If litter is the problem we are trying to solve (as was the original aim back in 2018 when a UK DRS was put forward and outlined)… are we focusing on the right things?
That doesn’t invalidate it as a policy. DRS will almost certainly capture high-quality material, and that has value. But even there, the picture is not entirely straightforward.
With growing demand for recycled content, particularly across Europe where there will be mandatory recycled content targets coming in 2030, it is not guaranteed that thematerial captured will remain in the UK system for long, if at all.
And then there is the question of delivery.
Designing an ideal scheme is one thing. Delivering it across four nations, with misaligned policy, infrastructure, and governance, is another. With differing approaches emerging (and even different DMOs) and the clock ticking towards implementation, it is fair to say that this is a logistical minefield.
I want to be proven wrong on DRS. Few things would make me happier, professionally speaking at least, than being able to point to it as a circular success story. I’d love it to deliver the kind of outcomes we often talk about in presentations and policy papers.
I’m just not convinced (yet) that we’ve fully thought about the consequences it brings to kerbside economics, or the system it needs around it to succeed.
This is just one of many things I’ll be unpicking in this column. I have a feeling not everyone will agree with me, so please tell me what I have gotten wrong, what I have gotten right and most of all, tell me why!
Until next time,
Keep it sorted.
The Waste Whisperer
Register for free to comment