Dear First Minister,

Urgent need to adjust the Deposit Return Scheme to avoid huge bias in favour of multinational companies over small independent producers

First of all, may we congratulate you on your election as First Minister.

We are writing to express our concern about the implementation of the proposed Deposit Return Scheme in Scotland which, through its poor design, threatens to destroy small businesses and customer choice. We note and welcome your commitment made during the SNP leadership campaign to exclude small businesses for the first year, however what is really needed is to pause and redesign the scheme so it both delivers greater recycling and avoids the devastating impact to small brewers.

We as an organisation fully support recycling. Indeed, pubs and breweries have long been recycling; many years before it was widely accepted as something individuals and many other businesses should routinely do. Pubs have long had a bottle recycling collection bin and smaller brewers are reliant on the reuse and recycling of casks and kegs. Small brewers do routinely encourage consumers to recycle packaged product and will continue to do so. They are disproportionately more likely to package into fully recyclable containers, like aluminium cans, in the first place…