Bottle recycling scheme to cost at least £1.8bn a year, warns BRC

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned that government plans to introduce a bottle recycling scheme could cost the industry £1.8bn a year from 2025.

The BRC also stated that this figure does not include the hundreds of millions that would be needed to set up a body to run the deposit return scheme (DRS).

The current £1.8bn per year estimate includes; capital costs, including buying and installing Return Vending Machines (RVM); labour costs, including staff training and time for processing returns; and other operating costs.

The BRC has pointed to the example of Scotland where a rushed implementation of a similar DRS scheme collapsed after governments failed to deliver a meaningful plan or realistic timelines.

The body believes that reforms to household recycling collection and EPR must first be introduced together, and only then will it be clear on the exact role of a DRS in further improving recycling rates.

Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the BRC, said: “The proposed Deposit Return Scheme is costly, complicated and cannot deliver the step change in recycling needed to justify it. By driving up costs by almost £2 billion per year the government risks pushing up prices for ordinary households, just as inflation is coming down.

“Government must first introduce its household collection and packaging levy reforms so that it can assess the best way forward on a DRS. On its current course, it will be consumers who will pay the price of this unnecessarily hasty, expensive and complex scheme.”