Circularity Scotland has announced an increase of up to 19% in the return handling fees for the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in Scotland, following consultation with industry and independent analysis by PwC.
Scotland’s DRS will go live in August, aiming to prevent billions of drinks bottles and cans each year from ending up as waste. When the scheme is introduced, a 20p deposit will be applied on all single use drinks containers sold in Scotland, which people will then get back when they take their bottles and cans to any return point.
Under the scheme, retailers and businesses across Scotland will act as these return points and the handling fee is the amount that they will be paid per container to cover their operational costs in being part of the scheme.
This fee has been recalculated following an assessment from PwC, which considered the impact of changes to the guidance around exemptions for return points announced by the Scottish Government last year and inflation.
The announcement is the latest step in Circularity Scotland’s work to help businesses prepare for the introduction of the scheme and follows on from producer fees for the scheme being reduced by up to 40% in December.
David Harris, chief executive of Circularity Scotland, said: “We’re focused on delivering a deposit return scheme that works for businesses of all sizes and delivers for Scotland.
“We will continue to work closely with industry, helping them to prepare for the scheme and ensuring that the scheme runs as efficiently and at as low cost as possible from August 2023.
“These changes will not increase the total scheme implementation costs or producer fee.”
To help businesses prepare for the scheme, Circularity Scotland is also running a series of registration workshops in February at venues across Scotland, as well as online.
Details of the revised returned handling fees are below:
Since being set up by industry in 2021 to act as the scheme administrator, Circularity Scotland has been working at pace to establish the infrastructure to ensure that the scheme runs effectively and cost-efficiently as possible.
However, it and the overall design of the scheme, have come in for criticism from across the drinks industry, with retailers, hospitality venues and producers all complaining about the complexity, cost and timing of the DRS.
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