England has material issues over proposed DRS

The United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has made a decision to exclude glass bottles from its planned deposit-return system (DRS) to be introduced in England in 2025. That decision, which also applies to Northern Ireland, has struck makers of aluminum beverage packaging as unfair.

A joint statement issued by the Metal Packaging Manufacturers Association (MPMA) and The Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (Alupro) calls it ”an unacceptable outcome for metal drinks containers,” adding that it “flies in the face of the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto [that] pledged a DRS to include glass and plastic drinks containers.”

The two groups note DEFRA has calculated including glass would have driven the cost of the DRS up by as much as 60 percent, so glass bottles were excluded for budgetary reasons. Thus, the MPMA and Alupro say, aluminum can be seen as being punished for its efficiency.

"One option is extremely convenient, the other far less so," Alupro and the MPMA say of that cost-benefit analysis. "By enforcing this decision, the government will unfairly create an unlevel playing field for metal packaging, which has among the highest recycling rates of any drinks packaging material—including glass.”

Supporting the exclusion of glass is the U.K.’s Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA). “We are pleased that DEFRA has listened to industry concerns about the inclusion of glass and has announced that glass containers will not be part of any future DRS scheme in England or Northern Ireland,” says Miles Beale, chief executive of that group.

"There are fundamental challenges to with including glass within DRS, such as the collection process, increased emissions, handling costs, equipment complexity, loss of storage space for retailers, reduced quality of clear glass, as well as health and safety concerns. DEFRA has listened and should be congratulated for recognizing and taking on board those concerns."

Alupro and the MPMA are holding their applause, saying instead, “If there were no common products packed in both glass and other materials, there would be far less of a problem, but this is not the case. By excluding glass from its DRS, the government has knowingly given the material an unfair competitive advantage at the point of sale.

“Consumers will be able to choose between a drinks container that carries a deposit and will have to be returned for that deposit to be redeemed, and a container that can just be placed in any recycl[ing] bin after use.”

The two groups also ask if excluding glass bottles from the DRS will cause some glass to go unrecycled. “In addition, as dealing with ground litter has been removed from the extended producer responsibility (EPR) proposals for England, by taking glass out of the DRS the government has removed any additional means of dealing with littered glass, a problem that many groups beyond can making are extremely concerned about,” Alupro and the MPMA say.

“The introduction of a scheme that disadvantages a material with such strong sustainability credentials, including an enviable recycling rate, is unacceptable, and the government needs to think again, keep its promise to the electorate, and revert to the scheme that its own impact assessment calculated would provide the most benefit," MPMA Director and Chief Executive Robert Fell says.

“As an industry, we’re always looking for new and innovative solutions to increase recycling rates and embrace the circular packaging economy of tomorrow,” says Tom Giddings, executive director of Alupro. He says, though, the DRS without glass included is not “a well-designed deposit return scheme.”

The MPMA and Alupro say including glass in such systems is common around the world—and is still planned in other parts of the U.K. “Many very successful DRS schemes around the world include glass, and much closer to home both Scotland and Wales plan to include glass in their own DRS. The question has to be asked: If many other countries are doing it, why can’t we?” the two organizations note.

The MPMA represents companies producing some 98 billion metal containers each year, while Alupro is a not-for-profit organization representing the U.K.’s aluminum packaging industry.