DRS a ‘bonfire of chaos’ – brewer
SCOTLAND’S beleaguered Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) has turned into a ‘bonfire of chaos’, the founder of a major brewery has said.
Innis and Gunn boss Dougal Sharp said the recycling scheme is ‘absolute insanity for consumers’ as it could add between £20 to £40 to the price of a weekly shop.
SNP and Green ministers want shoppers to pay a 20p deposit on every bottle and can to improve the recycling rate.
But Mr Sharp believes it may have the opposite effect. He said: ‘The scheme is absolute insanity for consumers, and actually will lead to potentially less recycling than more, which I find absurd.’
He described the DRS, which Scottish Green minister Lorna Slater is in charge of implementing, as a ‘bonfire of chaos’.
The much-delayed scheme is set to go live in March 2024 but Mr Sharp told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland show: ‘It’s been chaos from the outset and the chaos continues. Businesses are reeling with uncertainty and no one knows where to look next for answers. It’s a shambles.’
UK ministers have agreed to exempt the scheme from Internal Market laws as long as glass is excluded in order to match similar plans in the rest of Britain.
Nationalist ministers claim removing glass bottles may make it unviable.
Ms Slater this week claimed the DRS would be ‘ready to go’ if Westminster had not intervened. Mr Sharp insisted: ‘The scheme is not ready to go, that’s utter nonsense. If you talk to any of the major businesses nobody believes it is ready to go. It wasn’t ready to go in August. It certainly won’t be ready to go in March as there are hundreds of unanswered questions as to how it is going to work.’
THE verdict of a top brewer on the SNP Government’s disastrous bottle deposit Return scheme (DRS) – that it is a ‘bonfire of chaos’ – is as damning as it is incontestable.
Innis and Gunn boss dougal sharp said it was ‘absolute insanity for consumers’ as it would add up to £40 to the price of the weekly shop.
And his assessment that the DRS may lead to less recycling – rather than more – is a further illustration of the absurdity of an initiative which began with good intentions but has fallen foul of poor planning and the SNP’S familiar reverse Midas touch.
Green minister Lorna slater has overseen this shambles, which was on life support before the UK Government offered to rescue it by agreeing to exempt the DRS from UK-wide internal market legislation – on condition that glass would be excluded.
Predictably, this was the catalyst for another bout of needless constitutional warfare, as the Nationalists claimed the removal of glass bottles would render the scheme unworkable.
It is time that Ms slater and her hapless colleagues heeded the warnings of Mr sharp and the bosses of other businesses which crave clarity – and stopped trying to exploit the row for their own political gain.
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