Reviewing DRS
The issue of DRS has been hugely prominent here in the UK this past week. And for those cricket aficionados amongst you, no we are not referring to an umpire’s Decision Review System! We are of course referring to the recent announcement of the Deposit Return Scheme.
Consumers in the UK will now see the price of plastic, glass and metal drinks containers go up under the DRS scheme, in an attempt to reduce waste. Like in some venues in Germany, customers will then be able return the empty containers in return for a small cash sum.
Whilst I commend the government here for this response to waste and packaging, it does strike me that metal packaging is being thrown together with other forms of packaging; there seems to be a lack of message about the fact that aluminium has the best track record when it comes to recycling. Again it boils down to marketing. I would like to refer you back to Simon Jennings’ article in CanTech back in March, where he alluded to the fact that a scheme such as this will have no mention of deposits reflecting the real cost of recycling. So far, MPMA’s response is a little worrying, suggesting that they welcome any move to tackle this issue, with no mention of the government’s failure to note the difference between packaging formats. As an industry we need to speak up for our packaging format here.
Continuing on this theme, we will shortly be uploading our Candid Forum audio feature to the website, so please be sure to take a listen, where we tackle the issue of marketing the metal packaging industry.
Now that we’re back from Milan and Euro CanTech, I hope you all had a productive time at the show. As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback, and how we can improve the show.
