Circularity Scotland have announced an increase of 19% in the return handling fee – the fee that retailers and businesses who sell single use drink containers are paid to cover the operational costs of the requirement to be a return point.
This follows an independent assessment from PwC, which considered the impact of changes to the guidance around exemptions for return points announced by the Scottish Government last year and inflation.
David Harris, Chief Executive of Circularity Scotland said, “We’re focused on delivering a deposit return scheme that works for businesses of all sizes and delivers for Scotland. We will continue to work closely with industry, helping them to prepare for the scheme and ensuring that the scheme runs as efficiently and at as low cost as possible from August 2023. These changes will not increase the total scheme implementation costs or producer fee.”
To help businesses prepare for the scheme, Circularity Scotland is also running a series of registration workshops in February at venues across Scotland, as well as online. Details on these workshops and how to register can be found at www.circularityscotland.com
*The Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) goes live in August this year 2023 will change how everyone in Scotland recycles their single use drink containers and anyone who buys a drink will pay a 20p deposit for the container that it comes in. They get this money back when they return the container to a collection point to be recycled.