The UK government announced on April 25 it is postponing the launch of its Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) to 2027.
The scheme was first announced in 2018 and was due to launch in August 2023. It has since been pushed back to 2024, 2025, and now 2027.
The government said the push was needed to ‘achieve interoperability across the UK’, which includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
UK government ministers have blamed delays on the Welsh government’s insistence to include glass in the scheme, alongside plastic and metal. The UK government said doing so would be too complicated and expensive.
"Including glass in any UK DRS will create undue complexity for the drinks industry," said Environment Minister Robbie Moore.
Environmental associations have criticised the UK government for succumbing to lobbying and giving different treatment to glass bottles.
“It’s a huge disappointment that the new scheme isn’t going to start for another three years and isn’t going to cover glass bottles,” said Sandy Luk, chief executive of the Marine Conservation Society. “For our ocean’s sake, we can’t keep kicking the can – or bottle – down the road. We call on the UK government to speed up this law and to follow Wales’s ambition to include plastic, metal, and glass.”
Across the UK, consumers purchase an estimated 31 billion single-use drinks containers each year – 12 billion plastic drinks bottles, 14 billion drinks cans, and 5 billion glass bottles. Collection rates are currently at around 70% to 75%. The governments of the four nations want to increase recycling rates of single-use drinks containers to at least 90%.
The DRS will target contained between 150 ml and 3 litres in size. Any containers outside of this range will be in scope of the Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging, which has also been postponed to October 2025.
UK’s neighbour Ireland has introduced its DRS in February 2024.