Question reference: S6W-05942
- Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 27 January 2022
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Current status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 7 February 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether its Deposit Return Scheme will be expanded in a similar way to the Latvian scheme, to include standardised refillable bottles and containers for one-way recycling.
Answer
Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) will focus on non-refillable single-use drinks containers. Including refillables in the scheme would add a significant degree of complexity, with the need for industry to agree and operate standard bottle and collection crate designs and put in place bottle washing and refilling facilities in addition to the infrastructure already required for our DRS.
Once our DRS is operational we intend to consider options to expand the scope of the scheme. If there is a case for including refillable containers at this point then we can explore this as part of that work.
Scotland’s DRS will be ambitious by the standards of European schemes, including Latvia’s. I would note that Latvia’s scheme, unlike ours, is intended to exclude wine and spirits and that, while our scheme will reach 90% of containers collected for recycling by 2025, Latvia will not do so until 2030 for plastic and glass, and their target for aluminium is only 60%.