Sandy Luk, Chief Executive at the Marine Conservation Society, said:
Today marks a fantastic win for our seas, as MPs voted in favour of a deposit return scheme in England and Northern Ireland. With plans already in motion in Scotland and the Welsh Government exploring an ambitious scheme to include reuse, this is a great step towards schemes starting across the UK in October 2027.
Am I living on another planet? Scotland has already done the work on this and we were ready to get it underway BUT the Westminster Government would not allow us. The Scottish Government is being taken to court by Biffa because they spent money on preparing for the recycling scheme due to start in June 2023.
Having refused to allow Scotland and Wales proceed, England and Northern Ireland will now, allegedly, go ahead with a scheme in October 2027. If they had just kept apace with us and co-operated we could all be recycling while we shop……..now! Having been in Eire last year, we saw how simple it was to use.
Thanks to the tardiness of Westminster, not only did we lose the money in preparing for implementing the scheme, we have so far run up £167,812.00 legal costs in the case being brought by Biffa.
It’s high time the people of Scotland considered themselves to be grown ups and decide what we want and when we want it
Serious question, the Scottish Government passed this with support from all parties. Westminster refused to allow it, but wasn’t the glass recycling which caused the problem? (After much complaint by the drinks industry obviously). So why couldn’t we go ahead but just not use the glass recycling part of the machines? This would’ve avoided the court cases, loss of jobs in the company making the machines etc. We’d have been ahead of the game and able to bring in the final component later. Am I just being naive?