The latest constitutional crisis between the Scottish parliament and Westminster isn’t over an independence referendum or the high affairs of state. It’s about whether Scotland can recycle glass bottles more effectively. Last week, the UK government told Scottish ministers they couldn’t include glass bottles in their long-planned deposit return scheme.
Doing so would violate the Internal Market Act, they said, which dictates that any condition devolved administrations wish to place on the sale of goods or services needs central government approval – part of Westminster’s post-Brexit reshaping of the way the UK works. But when the act was being debated, ministers were confident that the deposit return scheme would be fully compliant. And yet this week we heard that cans and plastic bottles could be included, but glass bottles could not. So what changed?
The deposit return system was originally backed by all five parties at Holyrood in 2019. Now, it’s mired in controversy. It has become a political football, on the agenda for meetings between the first minister and the prime minister, and the key issue in the SNP leadership race. Business voices are increasing efforts to block it, while the environmental movement is desperately trying to keep it on track. It is an example of how a popular and pragmatic environmental policy – the kind of thing everyone should be able to agree on if we are to do anything to address the many ecological crises we face – can be derailed by politics.
Deposit schemes are a simple idea, used in more than 50 other places around the world, and were seen across the UK in the 70s and 80s. A small, fully refundable deposit is charged on every drinks can and bottle – in Scotland’s case 20p. That small financial incentive would get 90% or more of the cans and bottles sold back into the system, off our streets, out of our countryside and out of our seas. And they’re all available for higher-quality recycling, cutting emissions and reducing demand for virgin materials.
Given how ineffective our current recycling schemes are – the recycling rate for cans and bottles in Scotland is between 49% and 59% – deposit schemes are a tried and tested solution.
Almost two decades ago, the Scottish parliament was first petitioned to bring in deposit return by two primary school pupils. One of their dogs had been injured by broken glass. Those former pupils are now nearly 30, a fact that often comes to mind when people say this policy has been rushed.
In 2015, APRS launched our campaign for deposit return, with support from a network of community groups, environmental campaigners and responsible businesses.
Two years later, the then first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, announced that deposits would come to Scotland, and in 2019 the regulations were approved, alongside a start date of April 2021. That’s when the problems began.
Industry lobbying pushed it back to July 2022, then August 2023. Then, to some surprise, Westminster announced in January that England would get essentially the same system, minus glass (despite the 2019 Conservative manifesto promising a glass return scheme). Ministers have been vague on the reasons behind their exclusion of glass, but alluded to industry pressures. The UK’s own analysis of the scheme proposals showed the net benefits without glass would be about £3.6bn for the English system, but with glass in that would rise to about £5.9bn.
Westminster then turned its attentions to Scotland’s scheme. Alister Jack, the secretary of state for Scotland, intervened in the ongoing process of granting an internal market exclusion. Despite the best efforts of other UK departments, he got his way on glass, excluding it from Scotland’s scheme. This is where the issue ceased to be about pragmatic environmental solutions, and became a fight over Scotland’s right to shape its own policy.
All this has come at the expense of the environment – glass is the most carbon-intensive of the materials in the scope of the scheme. Micromanaging Scotland’s deposit return system has undermined its devolution settlement. It has created uncertainty for business and eroded trust, and the collateral damage appears to be the right for the devolved nations to bring in even minor improvements via environmental legislation.
Any measure that affects goods or services sold in Scotland (or Wales) now faces an effective unilateral veto. This is, of course, a key area of environmental policy. Elsewhere, we have seen wider measures blocked using the very legislation that established the Scottish parliament.
The prospects for change through devolution are gradually being closed down, which should concern people, whatever their views on independence. As an example, it’s hard to see Westminster agreeing to the Scottish government’s policy to end the sale of internal combustion engines by 2032. But there appear to be few limits to what can be blocked – irrespective of how far down the road we may be.
It’s hard not to feel a wave of existential despair watching a well-tested and proven environmental policy such as this become fodder for myths, political U-turns and intense industry lobbying.
If we cannot bring in the European gold standard for recycling, it’s hard to see how we can make what the IPCC calls the “rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” required to keep our planet habitable for the long term.
Dr Kat Jones is the director of APRS (Action to Protect Rural Scotland)
