I can remember when lorries used to come to the door and drop off bottles of \"pop\" (Vimto \/ Dandelion & B \/ Cream Soda \/ Lemonade \/ etc) \u00a0and pick up empties. \u00a0There were deposits on the bottles as an incentive to return them so they could be reused. \u00a0It wasn't called recycling in those days. \u00a0The neatness of this scheme was that bottles that went awol were picked up by small boys (and maybe girls) in order to augment their miserly pocket money. \u00a0This wasn't a national scheme. \u00a0It wasn't overseen by bureaucrats. \u00a0There were no standards, rules, or threats of fines. \u00a0No registration scheme you had to sign up to. \u00a0It was just what the company \u2013 Arnisons \u2013 did to help their business. \u00a0How things have changed.<\/p>\n
The UK is planning a national deposit \/ return scheme. \u00a0It will be loosely based on the German model which seems to work smoothly, from what I have seen, but that's Germans for you. \u00a0I fear that here it might become a nightmare.<\/p>\n
I base that fear on two thoughts. \u00a0Firstly, it's being organised as a top-down scheme from Whitehall which is well versed in overcomplication. \u00a0Secondly, the Scottish government has already shown what a Horlicks it is possible to generate with little thought and effort. \u00a0But that's county councils for you.<\/p>\n
Holyrood, determined not to wait for a UK-wide scheme (presumably lest they be accused of being told what to do by the UK), have gone their own way. \u00a0There is even a new quango \u2013 Circularity Scotland<\/a> \u2013 to oversee it. \u00a0I wonder why that makes me think of the Circumlocution Office<\/a>? \u00a0It's Lorna Slater, the green minister, who's notionally in charge.<\/p>\n The policy has been criticised as \u201cunworkable\u201d by 600 businesses, and one experienced SNP MSP, Fergus Ewing, has said that this scheme is the \u2018worst idea I\u2019ve seen in 43 years in politics\u2019. \u00a0And SNP MSPs, remember, don't normally speak out of turn.<\/p>\n He said the deposit return scheme would \u201cdecimate\u201d the drinks sector and he warned that tens of thousands of businesses would face \u201csevere adverse consequences\u201d. The initiative is set to be launched in August. \u00a0It has managed to be both overdue and not quite ready.<\/p>\n The deposit scheme requires drinks producers and businesses selling single-use drinks containers to recycle them. \u00a0Shops will charge 20p for every drink bought in a container made from steel, aluminium, glass or plastic, to be refunded upon recycling. \u00a0<\/span>It will be an offence to sell a drink in a container covered by the rules in Scotland if its producer is not registered with the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. \u00a0It will include glass bottles despite there being an excellent existing glass recycling scheme across the country. \u00a0The Times<\/a> has more details.<\/p>\n I can remember when lorries used to come to the door and drop off bottles of \"pop\" (Vimto \/ Dandelion & B \/ Cream Soda \/ Lemonade \/ etc) \u00a0and pick up empties. \u00a0There were deposits on the bottles as...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}