PM urged to introduce UK-wide "all-in" Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers

A coalition of leading environmental organisations including Keep Britain Tidy, CPRE, Surfers Against Sewage, Marine Conservation Society and Greenpeace have written to the Prime Minister calling on him to introduce a UK-wide “all-in” Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers.

The call comes following Defra’s latest consultation on a Deposit Return Scheme, which concluded at the start of June 2021. A decision on the scheme design expected to be made by Cabinet in July.

The Prime Minister is being urged to support an “all-in” Deposit Return Scheme in England – which would include aluminium, glass and plastic drinks containers of every size – and would mirror schemes being introduced elsewhere in Great Britain.

In their letter to Boris Johnson, the coalition says that there is still a suggestion from within the government that the proposed deposit scheme should be restricted to only small beverage containers, with the potential for glass bottles to also be excluded, despite the economic and environmental evidence from existing system operators, the government’s own impact assessments and the recent Environmental Audit Committee inquiry showing the only logical option is "all-in" system - rather than the untested ‘on the go’ system, which would risk leaving a significant volume of bottles and cans in the environment as litter.

Estimates suggest that over 8 billion drinks containers are wasted across the UK each year – meaning they are landfilled, incinerated or lost into our waterways. An "all-in" Deposit Return Scheme would help remove one of the most prevalent forms of litter, as Keep Britain Tidy’s Litter Composition Analysis, commissioned by Defra, found that drinks containers – including both large and small glass bottles - make up 75% of litter by volume found on our streets.

The coalition’s letter to the Prime Minister follows an open letter published in the Telegraph on 15^th June, signed by 26 organisations across a wide range of sectors including Keep Britain Tidy, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and RSPCA (click here to see the open letter in the Telegraph and full list of signatories).

Evidence from more than 40 other countries and regions around the world suggest that a comprehensive, "all-in" deposit return scheme for drinks containers could see collection rates for drink containers increase to well above 90%, producing clean material for recycling and preventing them from ending up as litter.

There are also considerable carbon benefits associated with an "all-in" scheme, with Defra’s own impact assessment concluding that an “all-in” system will result in six times the carbon savings compared with a more limited ‘on-the go’ scheme.

The coalition has told Boris Johnson that a restricted “on-the-go” scheme in England, which would be different to elsewhere in Great Britain, will add costs, complexity, confusion, loopholes and border issues to the new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programme, meaning a poor decision at this stage has the ability to affect the critical progression of the government’s Resources and Waste Strategy. 

There has been consistent support for “all-in” from the public, with recent polling by YouGov on behalf of the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) showing over 74% support for the introduction of an all-in deposit scheme, across all socio-economic groupings, with only 6% opposed.

The coalition’s letter to the Prime Minister can be viewed here.