The Scottish Ministers have published Draft Regulations that propose amendments to the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations SSI 2020/154, in order to alter the implementation of Scotland's deposit return scheme (DRS).
Scotland's DRS Regulations were first announced back in 2019, and seek to promote and secure an increase in recycling of materials, forming part of the Scottish Government's response to the global climate emergency, by ensuring the targeted materials are collected in larger quantities and separately to other materials.
They make provision for the operation of a deposit and return scheme for scheme articles, which are drinks that are intended to be sold to consumers in Scotland and are contained in single-use packaging.
The implementation of the Scottish DRS was delayed until at least October 2025, following a decision by the UK government to not agree to an exclusion that would enable Scotland to operate their own DRS whilst the other UK nations did not have any such schemes in place.
Following that delay, other UK nations have announced that they intend to introduce deposit return schemes across the UK in October 2027. Although in November 2024 Wales stated they would not proceed with a 'four nation joint DRS'.
However the Scottish government along with the UK government and the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) have agreed to proceed with DRS on a three nation basis. This move seeks to increase recycling rates of single-use plastic and metal drinks containers to at least 90%, to significantly cut littering, and to expand opportunities to collect and reprocess high quality materials.
As part of this move, the Scottish government have proposed to make certain policy changes to their DRS, these include:
For more information, see:
