On Monday (18 November 2024), Welsh deputy first minister and cabinet secretary for climate change and rural affairs, Huw Irranca-Davies MS, issued a written statement that attributed the decision to “issues caused by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020”.
The probable cause is Wales’ desire to include glass in its own DRS, despite it being excluded in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The same act caused Scotland to drop glass and delay its scheme last year.
The TRA said that now would be “a perfect opportunity to abandon the unnecessary” DRS and called the scheme “a disaster from start-to-finish”.
LARAC suggested that the scheme be paused until other policies such as extended producer responsibility (EPR) and Simpler Recycling “have come into place”.
It cautioned that the current PET plastic and aluminium DRS does not do enough to capture challenging materials that drive down capture rates, whilst increasing costs to consumers and removing valuable material from local authority waste streams.
The association warned that DRS was forecast in 2019 to cost billions of pounds for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This was before the addition of the Scottish DRS.
Robert Lewis, LARAC’s Welsh representative, said: “For many years, Wales has led the way in recycling rates through the UK. This has been achieved without a DRS, instead focusing on strong kerbside collections, investment in communication and engagement with citizens, and allowing local authorities the enforcement powers and flexibility to best perform, such as by deciding on residual collection frequency. For the price of DRS, this could be replicated across the whole of the UK, increasing capture and recycling rates for packaging beyond drinks containers, and even beyond packaging.”
Defra responds to Wales dropping out of DRS
Defra said on Tuesday (19 November 2024) that it is “fully committed” to continuing work on the DRS without Wales.
In a written statement it added: “With Wales already ranked second in the world for recycling, they are in a unique position of implementing a scheme into an already high recycling nation. For this reason, they prefer to continue to work on a scheme that is right for their context.
“We will continue to work in partnership with the Welsh Government, as they make decisions regarding a Deposit Return Scheme in Wales.”
‘The perfect time to abandon DRS folly’
TRA 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 eager 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.”
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