2023 Britvic Soft Drinks Review Licensed - Flipbook - Page 7
LICENSED CATEGORY OVERVIEW
LICENSED DEEP DIVE
LICENSED DATA TABLES
DRS – the Slovakian connection
We can learn much about the challenges and
opportunities of implementing Scotland’s DRS by looking
east to the Slovak Republic, which launched its own
scheme on 1 January 2022.
Slovakia is comparable to Scotland for several reasons:
both countries have populations of approximately 5.4
million people18 and there are cultural, political and
demographic similarities between the two states (both
even have established bagpipe cultures!19).
recycling rate for PET containers surged from 60% to
more than 70% by the end of its first year.21
This performance has exceeded initial expectations and
the Slovakian government expects to achieve a 90%
recovery of beverage packaging by 2025, which is four
years earlier than required by European legislation.20 All
this bodes well for Scotland’s DRS.
What’s more, Slovakia’s DRS was launched during an
economic downturn, just as Scotland’s is likely to be, and
the deposits imposed by the two schemes are similar
(£0.13 versus £0.20).
The scheme allows consumers to return bottles and cans
through more than 2,900 reverse vending machines in
shops and supermarkets and, on average, consumers in
Slovakia return 3.5 million packages daily.20
Since its introduction, the DRS has enabled the collection
of 820 million plastic and aluminium packages, and the
3.5 million
packages returned
daily by Slovakian
consumers20
18 National Records of Scotland, 13/07/2022 - https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/population/population-estimates/mid-yearpopulation-estimates/mid-2021 - Worldometers, 18/04/2023 https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/slovakia-population/
19 UNESCO, 2014 - https://www.unesco.org/archives/multimedia/document-4012
20 Recycling Portal, 20/09/2022 - https://recyclingportal.eu/Archive/75189
21 TOMRA – 30/01/2023 - https://www.tomra.com/en/discover/reverse-vending/feature-articles/slovakia-deposit-return-scheme#:~:text=Container%20return%20
rates%3A%2060%25%20(,Target%20of%2090%25%20by%202025.
SUSTAINABILITY
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