I’ve said it before: the most saddening thing about the DRS debacle is the size of the missed opportunity.
If it had been well planned and executed, the entire nation – retailers, producers, wholesalers and consumers – could have been looking forward together to 16 August with pride and excitement.
Instead, with only about seven months until the go-live date, the scheme remains mired in confusion, controversy and confoundment.
Experience and common sense tell you a project as complex as DRS takes years of careful consultation, planning, research and commitment from a lot of people. And, to be fair, the Scottish Government has had a lot of years. Nicola Sturgeon first unveiled her plans for a scheme way back in September 2017. Yes, Covid threw an almighty spanner in the works but anyone close to DRS over the last four or five years will tell you that the scheme was never going to be match fit for August 2023, Covid or no Covid. There were just too many mountains that required moving and not enough time to move them.
The most curious aspect of this whole debacle is the Scottish Government’s apparent lack of appetite to actually help get those mountains moved. They only appointed the Scheme Administrator last March with not much more than a year to go until they were supposed to deliver a working DRS. Circularity Scotland have become the whipping boys, but they were handed a poisoned chalice remit: deliver the undeliverable.
So here we are with seven months left and with many of the really important questions still unanswered. And there’s been more flip-flopping than on a beach in Lanzarote in July. We’ve seen U-turns and shifts on everything from exemptions and return point numbers to producer fees and handling fees.
Call me cynical but it looks like the government long since realised it couldn’t deliver the original scheme on time, the one that was promised and set in law, so they decided to knock off a few corners to try to create something – anything – that would let DRS go live in August. Are we heading for DRS-lite?
And as if all the in-built, systemic weaknesses with the plans weren’t enough, there have been plenty of unforeseen external challenges to further test the resolve of the government. The handling fee issue is subject to a legal challenge, the collection schedule is still a long way off and a plethora of other very serious problems still beset the scheme.
The biggest issue here, to return to my original point, is that this could all have been so different. If the Scottish Government had engaged – genuinely engaged – with industry, it could have ploughed its way through all the many legitimate challenges that launching a DRS entails, one bite at a time. It wouldn’t have been easy and it wouldn’t have been pretty in parts, but it would have been the grown-up way to swallow that elephant.
Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR
So many questions… so little time
I’ve said it before: the most saddening thing about the DRS debacle is the size of the missed opportunity.
If it had been well planned and executed, the entire nation – retailers, producers, wholesalers and consumers – could have been looking forward together to 16 August with pride and excitement.
Instead, with only about seven months until the go-live date, the scheme remains mired in confusion, controversy and confoundment.
Experience and common sense tell you a project as complex as DRS takes years of careful consultation, planning, research and commitment from a lot of people. And, to be fair, the Scottish Government has had a lot of years. Nicola Sturgeon first unveiled her plans for a scheme way back in September 2017. Yes, Covid threw an almighty spanner in the works but anyone close to DRS over the last four or five years will tell you that the scheme was never going to be match fit for August 2023, Covid or no Covid. There were just too many mountains that required moving and not enough time to move them.
The most curious aspect of this whole debacle is the Scottish Government’s apparent lack of appetite to actually help get those mountains moved. They only appointed the Scheme Administrator last March with not much more than a year to go until they were supposed to deliver a working DRS. Circularity Scotland have become the whipping boys, but they were handed a poisoned chalice remit: deliver the undeliverable.
So here we are with seven months left and with many of the really important questions still unanswered. And there’s been more flip-flopping than on a beach in Lanzarote in July. We’ve seen U-turns and shifts on everything from exemptions and return point numbers to producer fees and handling fees.
Call me cynical but it looks like the government long since realised it couldn’t deliver the original scheme on time, the one that was promised and set in law, so they decided to knock off a few corners to try to create something – anything – that would let DRS go live in August. Are we heading for DRS-lite?
And as if all the in-built, systemic weaknesses with the plans weren’t enough, there have been plenty of unforeseen external challenges to further test the resolve of the government. The handling fee issue is subject to a legal challenge, the collection schedule is still a long way off and a plethora of other very serious problems still beset the scheme.
The biggest issue here, to return to my original point, is that this could all have been so different. If the Scottish Government had engaged – genuinely engaged – with industry, it could have ploughed its way through all the many legitimate challenges that launching a DRS entails, one bite at a time. It wouldn’t have been easy and it wouldn’t have been pretty in parts, but it would have been the grown-up way to swallow that elephant.
Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR
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