Let’s use Scotland’s DRS delay to avoid ‘omnishambles’ of separate schemes

It’s looking like a fair bet we’ll never get to see 20p deposits on drinks containers in the UK.

By the time the UK’s respective governments actually get round to launching their own deposit return schemes, inflation will surely mean it has to be a much bigger sum to have any impact. Especially if today’s ONS figures are anything to go by.

And the Scottish government’s latest decision to delay the DRS launch for a third time has cast doubt on whether it will happen at all – at least in the way it had envisaged.

After a series of sweeteners and compromises to try to calm anger from producers and retailers, new first minister Humza Yousaf effectively conceded the looming 16 August launch date was a disaster waiting to happen.

Yesterday he tried, somewhat half-heartedly, to blame the UK government’s threats to block the scheme under internal market rules for the latest delay.

In truth, that was not the main factor. The killer blow was probably struck two weeks ago, when a series of supermarket CEOs came out in unheard-of fashion to warn of chaos – despite a system of reverse vending machines in their stores being seen as the key pillar to the launch.

Those supermarket CEOs were no doubt among those celebrating the latest delay, along with many in the brewing, wine and hospitality sector.

But major soft drinks companies have been left wondering if they have effectively splashed £100m in preparatory spend up the wall.

The industry may be split on whether the Scottish government was right to abandon the August launch, but it’s united on one thing: virtually all of the stumbling blocks that have turned DRS into such a political mess were foreseeable many years ago. From the impact of producer and retailer fees, to the problems created by glass bottles and the logistics of creating tens of thousands of return points from scratch against an arbitrary deadline, DRS was never going to be smooth sailing.

Still, not even the most seasoned industry hands could have predicted quite what a horlicks the politicians would make of it.

Until the new FM took over, the Scottish government was still insisting it was all systems go for August, despite tens of thousands of producers and retailers having failed to sign up. It was so desperate to go ahead, it even mooted the idea of allowing small producers to opt out of the scheme for the first year. As if soft drinks giants and supermarket own label bosses would idly sit by and allow their products to suddenly become 20p a bottle more expensive than their minnow rivals without so much as raising an eyebrow.

But it’s not just Scottish politicians that have let DRS down. While the UK government’s blatant attempts to use DRS as a weapon to attack the SNP may not have been the main reason for yesterday’s delay, they hardly smack of long-term environmental commitment.

This is the blueprint for the DRS system that the rest of the UK was supposed to be supporting as a key plank in its war on plastic. Instead, DRS has somehow ended up splitting the industry, while politicians are at each others’ throats over a policy they are supposed to be promoting.

Despite all the appalling mishandling, there is now at least a chance, albeit by default, that we could end up with a united approach to DRS across the UK. The industry has warned right from day one that having different systems across borders was a recipe for an “omnishambles”.

Whether this means Yousaf agreeing to yet another delay to match the UK government’s less ambitious October 2025 target, or ministers south of the border getting their act together and actually getting behind DRS, it is a chance the system’s many supporters will be hoping can be seized. Even if history suggests the odds are very long indeed.