Bottles: Recycling

(asked on 9th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the financial impact of a bottle deposit scheme for England on local authority budgets, including the impact of the likely removal of polyethylene terephthalate from local waste streams.


This question was answered on 23rd November 2020

As part of the Government’s ambitious commitments to reforming producer responsibility systems across the UK, we have committed to introduce a deposit return scheme (DRS) for drinks containers.

Introducing a DRS for drinks containers will mean that some of the material local authorities currently collect via kerbside will instead be collected through the DRS. It is expected this will have an impact on the amount of waste collected by local authorities and the revenues they receive for selling that material on to waste reprocessors. However, the scheme is also expected to reduce the incidence of littering of the containers in scope of the scheme, and therefore to generate savings to local authorities.

A full new burdens assessment will be carried out once final policy decisions have been taken. Our Resources and Waste Strategy for England committed to fund any new burdens incurred by local authorities.

The costs and benefits of a DRS for drinks containers will be presented in our Impact Assessment published alongside our second consultation on the introduction of a deposit return scheme next year.

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