- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 April 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to the statement on the Circularity Scotland website that the retailer handling fee will be determined “annually by independent consultants”, whether (a) this statement is correct and (b) the consultants referred to are PwC, and, if so, what its response is to reports that PwC are not in fact determining the fee, but rather providing advice on the basis of which the fee will be determined by Circularity Scotland.
Answer
Setting and paying the handling fee is a matter for return-point operators and the scheme administrator, as provided for by regulation 11 of the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020. That is in line with the principle of industry leadership of the scheme, and the Scottish Government is not involved in this process.
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Monday, 04 April 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding increasing recycling, what discussions it has had with (a) COSLA and (b) local authorities on the recycling model reportedly being pursued in Wales.
Answer
We are committed to continuing to work with COSLA and Local Authorities to meet Scotland’s ambitious waste reduction and recycling targets, to promote a circular economy and tackle the climate change crisis.
In May we will publish a consultation on a route map outlining how we will deliver our 2025 waste and recycling targets in a way that maximises carbon saving potential to 2025 and beyond. As part of the development of the route map, we have looked at high performing recycling systems across the world, including Wales. COSLA and local authority representatives have been involved in pre-consultation development of the route map. We have dedicated, regular forums with Local Authorities and COSLA to progress our shared waste and circular economy objectives.
We also continue to work closely with all four UK administrations to deliver packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reforms, which will tackle excess packaging, and help fund improved local recycling collections of packaging waste from households.
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 March 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 22 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for its Deposit Return Scheme, published in 2021, how the 1% increase in business benefits due to the additional half a billion containers within the scheme was calculated.
Answer
The benefits of a Deposit Return Scheme to businesses are not only a function of container numbers. As well as reimbursement to retailers through the handling fee, the benefit to businesses includes: savings from waste uplift costs for hospitality return points, reduced operational costs for private waste management companies (relating to uplifts from hospitality customers, albeit offset by reduced income from these activities), avoided compliance costs for producers, and income to the reverse vending machine service industry, as well as potential advertising revenue.
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 March 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 22 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for its Deposit Return Scheme, published in 2021, for what reason it has included a 23% increase in benefits to operators of the scheme and an additional half a billion containers but not reflected this in the costs of the scheme; how the mix of material has been factored into its calculations, and what breakdown of materials it has factored into the additional half a billion containers.
Answer
The economic model underpinning the figures in the amended final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment takes account of a number of factors, and costs and benefits do not necessarily increase in proportion to the change in input. In this case, the addition of 0.5bn containers increases costs through greater potential for fraudulently redeemed containers, but also increases the benefits both from more income from sale of materials and from unredeemed deposits.
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 March 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 22 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for its Deposit Return Scheme, published in 2021, which includes an additional half a billion containers within the scheme and additional 20,000 return points, which is a 118% increase on its initial estimate of the number of return points, for what reason there is no corresponding increase in costs to reflect this.
Answer
The cost increases within the model are not proportional increases. There may be additional collections but there is also additional capacity within the system.
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 March 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 22 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for its Deposit Return Scheme, published in 2021, in light of it including an additional half a billion containers within the scheme and additional 20,000 return points, how it was calculated that the costs to regulators will remain the same, and how this calculation has been validated.
Answer
The cost to the regulator is estimated based on the number of businesses to be regulated; it is therefore unaffected by any increase in the number of containers.
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 March 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 22 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) for its Deposit Return Scheme, published in 2021, in light of the original BRIA including an estimate of 1.7 billion containers within the scheme, which has been increased to 2.2 billion containers in the Final BRIA, which represents an increase of half a billion containers within the scheme, and in light of an increase in return points from approximately 17,000 to 37,000, which represents a 118% increase in return points, how the 7% increase in costs in table 3 was calculated, and what incentives there are for businesses to create facilities within their premises for the scheme.
Answer
When calculating this increase, it has been assumed that the additional return points are manual return points, which have a lower cost than those with reverse vending machines.
Zero Waste Scotland carried out an intensive data-gathering process to arrive at the figure of 17,000 which remains our best and final estimate of the number of return points, prior to implementation. Although we modelled the figure of 37,000 to provide a sensitivity analysis for the economic case for our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), we are confident that we have identified all the larger retail sites, and if these additional return points did exist, they would overwhelmingly be manual return points. Circularity Scotland Ltd, the scheme administrator for our DRS who provided the figure of 37,000, agrees with this assessment.
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 March 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 22 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for its Deposit Return Scheme, published in 2021, and the increase in business costs for an additional half a billion containers within the scheme, from table 1 to table 2, of £34 million, in light of this being a 3% cost increase associated with a 23% increase in containers, how this cost was calculated, and how distance takeback services from online retailers have been factored into the calculations for the additional half a billion containers in the market place.
Answer
The economic model underpinning the figures in the amended final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment takes account of a number of factors and costs and benefits do not necessarily increase in proportion to the change in input.
The modelled cost increase reflects the likelihood that there will be additional capacity within the system for return points to handle additional containers and the possibility of an increase in the frequency of collection rather than requiring additional reverse vending machines (RVMs). This would lead to additional running costs and staff time but not costs for additional RVMs. The scheme administrator is responsible for setting a suitable logistics schedule with retailers at an agreed frequency for the collection of materials, aligned with the capacity of the RVM and individual store requirements.
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 March 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 22 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for its Deposit Return Scheme, published in 2021, and the statements regarding local authority benefits as a result of half a billion containers being removed from local authorities, what its position is on whether such a removal of containers would represent a reduction in benefits for local authorities.
Answer
In calculating the impact of our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) on local authorities, the economic model in the final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) uses compositional data on the tonnage (‘dirty’ weights) that Local Authorities actually manage, both recycled and in the residual waste stream, rather than the number of containers placed on the market. This aligns with the (weight-related) costs local authorities actually incur.
Hence the benefit to local authorities set out in table 3 of the amended final BRIA does not change in the sensitivity analysis presented in Annex F. The amended final BRIA can be reviewed here: A Deposit Return Scheme for Scotland: Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) (www.gov.scot) .
- Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 March 2022
-
Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 22 April 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its planned Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) and the current Packaging Recovery Note (PRN) system, how the DRS scheme will work alongside the PRN scheme; whether it anticipates that the DRS will result in more or fewer glass bottles being made from recyclate through the remelt process; whether it will publish the full details of its analysis of this aspect of recycling, and whether it will provide details on how its Deposit Return Scheme will "significantly increase the quantity and quality of glass recyclate" as referred to by the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity in evidence to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee on 25 January, 2022 (Official Report, c. 6).
Answer
The Scottish Government is clear that deposit return schemes (DRS) are a form of extended producer responsibility (EPR). Therefore, producers will not have to purchase Packaging Waste Recycling Notes (PRNs) or Packaging Waste Export Recycling Notes (PERNs), or pay producer fees under packaging EPR once that is operational, for containers collected through our DRS. We are working with the other UK administrations to legislate to give effect to this position.
On the member’s questions regarding quantity and quality of glass collected through our DRS, I refer him to the answer to question S6W-07104, answered on 18 March 2022. Increased quantity and quality of glass cullet means more glass available to go to re-melt and we would expect Scotland’s glass industry to benefit from this economic opportunity.
All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .