Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government will shortly bring forward secondary legislation to establish a deposit return scheme. That legislation will, amongst other things, outline the conditions to be met by any person acting as a scheme administrator.

Zero Waste Scotland are currently working with eight local authorities to assess the impact of deposit return on their waste collection services. Work with the remaining 24 local authorities is expected to follow. It is intended that the outputs from this work will be used to inform discussion about the provision of support for any future service planning and delivery by local authorities.

No local authorities have approached Zero Waste Scotland for support in implementing waste collection service changes as a result of the introduction of a deposit return scheme.

Representative bodies of those sectors who will be directly involved in operating the deposit return scheme were invited to sit on the Implementation Advisory Group. Further detail on the Group can be found on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/groups/deposit-return-scheme-implementation-advisory-group/ .

The Scottish Government has engaged with a broad range of stakeholders who will be involved in deposit return, including retailers that offer online sales. That engagement will continue as work to implement the scheme progresses, supported by the DRS Implementation Advisory Group.

It is the intention that all business acting as return points be reimbursed reasonable costs associated with the collection and storage of material captured through deposit return. The final structure of fees will be set out in due course as part of work on implementing the scheme.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-24293 on 1 August 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The First Minister’s Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership reported in December 2018. It recommended a new statutory human rights framework for Scotland, including a right to a healthy environment.

The new National Taskforce will now take forward the Group’s principal recommendations, and will be co-chaired by myself and Professor Alan Miller. Its formal remit and membership will be announced in due course.

The approach of advertising the deposit price separately has been identified as best practice from extensive evidence gathering in countries with well-established deposit return schemes as well as experience from other policies such as the single use carrier bags charge.

The modelling was done at a national level and is based on information on performance of other international schemes. The choice of a return to retail model which maximises accessibility is intended to minimise any risk of variation by geography or demography.