Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is great and should be piloted in England but we need to be careful with the pilot since the first impression is always the best impression. If the scheme fails, that will be the end of it.
I have been doing a little research on reverse vending machines and I could speak to a few folks who are experts in this field. Special kudos to the Scottish government for making this happen. Now, Reverse Vending Machines (RVM) have been installed in the UK ages ago but have never really taken off but with the current “Public awareness and focus on Plastic Pollution” and “DEFRA’s initial consultation“, there is hope the Deposit Return Scheme can be deployed nationally soon.
The whole ecosystem to support the scheme needs to be in place and this is the tough part. Here are a few this that a DRS Scheme Implementation needs to get on top of before launching a pilot that will fail without any of these
- Confirming there is no loss of employment due to the installation of the DRS machines
- Costs to fund the initial deposit returns
- Fraud Prevention
- Standardised Barcodes on bottles
- Strong lobby by parties not interested in the Scheme
- Rental of Space for the machines and the collection
- Scheduling collections of collected bottles
- Recycling Partners to recycle the collections
- Costs for Maintenance
- Public Awareness Educational/ Communication costs
- RVM Installation Cost, Maintenance, Rental, Lease etc.
This is an example of how this was done in Lithuania in record time