On making most efficient use of existing infrastructure, such as transport logistics and bulking points, the key thing to remember is that the scheme administrator will, we expect, be interested in making the process as efficient as possible, because that will keep costs down for producers. A producer-led scheme bakes in the efficiency drive for the scheme administrator.
As part of our preparation to support that, we are trying to identify existing waste-management sites, waste-collection operators and parcel-delivery companies that could offer the services that the scheme administrator will require. We have been engaging with such operators in order to understand their capacity and infrastructure, and their level of interest in being involved. Fundamentally, it will be up to producers to decide whether they want to explore that.
We think that it will, especially in rural parts of Scotland, make most financial sense to use existing infrastructure. If we can provide the contacts and get potential suppliers thinking about how they could be involved, that will maximise the opportunity for that to be the case.
The reprocessing workstream is looking at all the materials and infrastructure, and not just PET. We talk about PET reprocessing because, in the Scottish context, the scheme creates a unique opportunity to aggregate the amount of material that is required potentially to attract inward investment in new infrastructure. At the moment, the material is spread over a large number of people, so such investment is not viable.
However, that does not mean that we are not interested in looking at how we can maximise the use and economic value of all the material. We are aware that significant glass-reprocessing capacity is available in Scotland already. There is demand for the glass industry to increase the recycled content that comes into the furnace, not just because of environmental drivers and customers’ desire for material to have increased recycled content, but because of the business drivers. Using recycled glass uses about 20 per cent less energy than when virgin cullet is fed into the process, so that is a real driver. We want to work with the glass industry to reassure it that the deposit return scheme will provide the quantity and quality of material that it wants to support the existing Scottish success story that is our glass-reprocessing capacity.