Deposit Return Scheme: Make big business polluters pay

Philip Stott

The SNP-Green Scottish government’s planned Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) has been effectively scrapped. A proposed start date of March 2024, already three years late, has been abandoned. The scheme will now not be launched until at least October 2025, but this also may not happen either.

A late intervention by the Tory government at Westminster meant a proposal to include glass in the scheme was blocked. The UK Internal Market Act was used by the Tories to insist on the changes, which trumped the powers that Holyrood currently have.

A Scottish DRS could have still gone ahead to include cans and some PET plastic containers but the Scottish Green minister pulled the plug on the whole thing. Whether a modified DRS does start in Scotland, perhaps alongside Northern Ireland, Wales and England, in late 2025 is unclear.

Tory intervention

The DRS debacle raises two key issues. First of those is the increasing tendency by the Tories at Westminster to try to block or amend legislation from Holyrood using their reserved powers. The recent gender recognition legislation was stymied after an intervention from Sunak.

It’s possible similar steps can be taken over other legislative issues prior to the next general election. The Tories see an opportunity to go on the offensive against a weakened and divided SNP – hoping to undermine support for independence at the same time.

However, this is likely to backfire. Recent polling shows backing for independence is still at historically high levels. And further interventions like this can also see the SNP recover some support. Both the SNP and the Greens point to the increased meddling by Westminster in “Scotland’s right to decide its own priorities”.

The second issue the failed DRS raises is that market-based solutions to resolving the real issue of the climate crisis will not work. The DRS is in the words of Lorna Slater “an industry-led project”. In other words a scheme designed in the interests of big business.

It would mean every can and bottle – whether aluminium, plastic or glass – would have a 20p increased cost for consumers. A massive hike in price for working-class people already facing a cost-of-living crisis.

The 20p could only be retrieved (In the form of a voucher not cash) if the can or bottle were returned into a reverse vending machine in a store, supermarket or local community facility.

Large numbers of these would not be returned – at least 10% to 20% – meaning the producers would pocket the 20p – thus funding the scheme and the cost of the machines and infrastructure businesses have invested in. A no-lose situation for the highly profitable big drinks and retail industries.

Moreover, Scottish local authorities who are currently responsible for kerbside recycling of at least aluminium cans and plastic containers – also some glass collections as well – would no longer offer that service.

Decades of cuts to local council budgets have put a massive strain on cleansing when what is required are fully funded services to deal with the essential environmental tasks.

Recycling plastic, cans and bottles also needs to be real recycling – not simply dumped in landfill or shipped overseas. And that requires government investment and workers’ control.

The DRS, claim the SNP and Scottish Greens, would improve recycling of cans and plastic bottles to 90% by enforcing a 20p tax on every drink. You are only exempt from the tax if the consumer returns the container.

real polluters

But they are utterly silent on the real polluters. Major culprits include the producers and supermarkets, who use 800,000 tonnes of plastic packaging every year.

World plastic production is projected to rise to 34 billion tonnes by 2050, around 100 times the present level, by which time it will account for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Therefore cutting down use of plastic – and especially single use plastic – is essential. But that will only be done if we bring into public ownership the big polluters, including the major supermarkets, food and drink companies as part of a socialist plan for the economy.