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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of plastic and tin deposit return schemes; and what progress her Department has made on rolling out these schemes.

Deposit return schemes (DRS) are a well-established policy mechanism across Europe and globally, with well-functioning schemes achieving collection targets of 90% or higher. DEFRA published a DRS consultation impact assessment in 2021 and are currently updating this to align with final policy positions.

In January 2023 we published the government response to the 2021 consultation, setting out policy decisions and next steps for introducing the scheme (link here) including setting out that the DRS will start from 1 October 2025. We are currently drafting the legislation to enable delivery of DRS and working to appoint a DRS scheme administrator by summer 2024.