The Deposit Return Scheme in the Republic of Ireland explained | Ecosurety
Deposit Return Schemes
Introduction
A Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is a recycling system that targets commonly littered items – usually drinks containers. Consumers pay a small deposit on items such as plastic bottles, which can then be refunded at a return point. Return points are usually located at retailer sites that sell similar products. DRSs have been particularly successful in Scandinavian countries, which report over 90% recycling rates of in-scope items.
The DRS in the Republic of Ireland went live for consumers on 1 February 2024.
The Republic of Ireland DRS is managed separately to those in other countries in the UK, including Northern Ireland, and will operate slightly differently as summarised in this article.
What we know so far
Towards the end of 2022 the Minister of State with responsibility for Communications and Circular Economy, Ossian Smyth, launched Ireland’s national DRS. It was confirmed that the DRS will go live to consumers in February 2024 and will include PET plastic bottles and aluminium and steel cans between 150ml and 3 litres. A deposit of 15c will apply to containers 500mls or less and a deposit of 25c for each container above 500ml.
The scheme is operated by Deposit Return Scheme Ireland CLG, trading as Re-turn, who were appointed in July 2022. Re-turn developed the required IT, infrastructure and communications systems over the course of 2023, including:
Design, procurement and implementation of a digital DRS platform
Registration of producers and products
Registration of retailers and other return point operators
Sourcing and installation of reverse vending machines
Procurement of contracts for the collection, processing and recycling of material
The Deposit Return Scheme in the Republic of Ireland explained
The Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in Ireland went live on 1 February 2024. Find out what we know so far and your required actions.
9 May 2024
Share
Design and delivery of a comprehensive communications and awareness programme for businesses and consumers
Who is affected?
All producers and retailers placing in-scope drinks containers on the market in Ireland are impacted and legally required to register for the DRS.
When is it taking place?
DRS launched for consumers in Ireland in February 2024, but obligated producers and retailers should have registered for the scheme by October 2023. Products registered after 31 October 2023 will incur a product registration fee of €100.
How much will it cost?
Producers are responsible to cover the costs of:
Future costs of cleaning up litter resulting from discarded beverage containers
Costs of awareness-raising measures
Costs of waste collection for beverage containers, including collection infrastructure as well as the transport and treatment of that waste
Costs of data gathering and reporting
The Producer fee will be calculated on the above costs and will be paid per container, regardless of size. It will vary for different ‘in scope’ material types placed on the market, but not by the size of container.
If producers have applied a national barcode to their drinks containers which is unique to the Republic of Ireland the producer fee will be €0.0125 per container for aluminium or steel, and €0.02 for PET plastic.
A surcharge will be applied for producers using international barcodes. For large producers, who have placed more than 10 million containers on the market in total, this will be €0.0312 per container. For small producers placing between 1.5 million and 10 million containers on the market a year, the surcharge is €0.0135 per container.
What do I need to do now?
Producer registration for the Republic of Ireland DRS is open at www.re-turn.ie. All producers and retailers placing in-scope drinks containers on the market in Ireland are legally obliged to register and should do so now.
All in scope drinks containers must be also registered with Re-turn by the producer before they can be placed on the market. Any products that are registered will incur a €100 fee, as will any proposed changes to existing registered products.
When registering PET plastic bottles, producers will need to specify the material compositions of the bottle, label, adhesive and cap.
Now the DRS is live, any new products and product changes must be approved by Re-turn before they are placed on the market. Note that Re-turn is obligated to audit producer records as part of the Producer Membership agreement.
All in-scope drinks containers of the DRS must display the national deposit logo shown below:
Essential information and guidance on the technical requirements of the DRS, such as container dimension information, barcode specifications and labelling requirements can be found on the producer section of the Re-turn website, which we strongly advise you to check.
Single-use Plastic Directive
The Republic of Ireland have implemented a DRS because it is a requirement under the EU Single-use Plastic Directive (SUPD). This means some of the other provisions under the SUPD will interact with it.
The SUPD requires that all PET beverage bottles contain at least 25% recycled content by 2025 increasing to 30% by 2030. This means Re-turn will encourage the best possible PET bottles to be placed on the market to incentivise bottle-to-bottle recycling. It also means they will encourage other materials – for instance, PVC plastic or carbon black colouring – to be phased out by the end of 2024, by modulating the producer fee by recyclability.
Producers must also report the percentage of recycled material in their PET bottles to inform the above targets.
We can help ensure that you have the necessary high-quality data captured to enable future reporting requirements. This data can also enable our data specialists to provide you with early DRS cost modelling, based on the information we currently have from government and system operators.
We can conduct this work alongside other services such as EPR and plastic packaging tax preparation and modelling, to help you achieve a holistic understanding of your future exposure to costs, and opportunities to mitigate those costs.
Ultimately this can help you to improve the environmental credentials of the packaging that you produce.
If you have a question on DRS which is not captured in this article, our team of experts will be happy to help you. Please contact your account manager directly, call us on 0333 4330 370 or send an email to info@ecosurety.com.
External resources
Please visit the Re-turn website for full information regarding the DRS and the required actions by producers: re-turn.ie.
You can also access the National Campaign Communications Assets for the DRS here.
by Louisa Goodfellow
Policy Manager
9 May, 2024
As Policy Manager Louisa provides key support to our team, including preparing reports on environmental policy issues and maintaining awareness of new developments.
