Supermarkets’ secret bid to block plastic bottle deposit scheme

SUPERMARKETS and food giants are secretly lobbying the Government to thwart public demands for a deposit and return scheme on plastic bottles.

Industry bosses have met and written to ministers setting out their opposition to making firms take more responsibility for recycling packaging waste, largely on the grounds of cost.

Specifically, they detail ‘unanimous’ industry opposition to a deposit and return scheme (DRS) for plastic bottles and drinks cans.

This is at odds with the public and their customers who showed 78 per cent support for a DRS in a survey last week. Among the five bodies involved in the lobbying is the British Retail Consortium.

The BRC speaks for all the mainstream supermarkets, including Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons. The same organisation opposed the introduction of a 5p fee on throwaway plastic bags.

But the supermarkets have since praised the reduction of more than 70 per cent in the number of bags issued at the tills and the fact millions of pounds have been raised for good causes.

Every day an estimated 35million plastic bottles and 20million aluminium cans are sold across the UK. Currently, less than 60 per cent of the bottles are collected for recycling. The rest go into landfill, are burned for energy, or end up as litter.

Evidence from other countries, including Germany and Norway, shows that the introduction of a simple deposit on plastic bottles and cans can raise collection rates to 90 per cent and above.

Two letters have been released following Freedom of Information Act requests by Greenpeace.

The first is dated September 28, last year, and refers to an earlier meeting with environment minister Therese Coffey on the issue of packaging, waste and recycling.

The letter emphasises the financial might of the organisations, stating: ‘We estimate that the combined membership or our five organisations has a turnover of around £280billion and accounts for over 40 per cent of UK manufacturing employment.’

It raises objections to proposals from the EU to require the industry to do more to collect and recycle packaging. And it claims the proposals could see ‘UK producer responsibility costs for packaging increase from the current average of £ 50million-£ 100million per annum to as much as £1billion.’

The group suggests the UK’s decision to leave the EU could allow them to avoid any radical changes to packaging rules. A second letter dated February 6 this year continues the pressure and specifically opposes a DRS for plastic bottles and cans.

It states: ‘We wish to reiterate that all five organisations are unanimous in the view that such a policy would seriously undermine the viability of current kerb-side recycling schemes, tackle only a small proportion of littered items, impose high cost and inconvenience on consumers, and increase environmental impact.’

In fact these organisations are no longer ‘unanimous’. A few weeks after the letter was sent, Coca- Cola announced that it would support DRS in an effort to increase the amount of recycled plastic used to make bottles.

And the industry’s claims are at odds with a recent study by waste experts, Eunomia, which argued that English councils could save £35million a year from DRS. The letters were written despite all the leading supermarkets pledging on their websites that they care for and are striving to protect the environment.

As well as the BRC, the groups putting pressure on the Government are the Food & Drink Federation, the British Soft Drinks Association, the Industry Council for Research on Packaging and The Packaging Association.

Oceans campaigner at Greenpeace, Tisha Brown, said that if the industry refuses to carry the cost of dealing with plastic waste, it is passed on to taxpayers.

She said: ‘We’re living in an enormous uncontrolled experiment to find out what hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic pollution will do to our oceans, our seafood, and the people who eat it.’

All supermarkets were contacted for comment.