A good idea can quickly turn sour when the SNP-Green Government is involved.
A Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is, on the whole, a worthwhile plan to improve recycling rates, decrease littering, and help the environment.
The premise is simple. Anyone who buys a drink in a container will be charged a small deposit, which they get back when the product is recycled.
My parents used to have a shop on Argyll Street in Glasgow and I can fondly remember seeing people carrying their bottles of ginger along the road to get the money back. A DRS works in a similar way.
The UK Government are bringing in a DRS across the UK. Many countries internationally already have an effective system in place.
So, the introduction of a DRS should be straightforward.
But, as always when the SNP and Greens are involved, Scotland’s DRS looks likely to be highly controversial, unworkable, and an economic disaster waiting to happen.
The SNP and Greens are notoriously poor at communicating and engaging with businesses. When it comes to a DRS, that’s a huge problem, because the only way this project will work is if the business community buys in and makes it work.
It should have been a scheme designed for small businesses. They should have been the central stakeholders. Instead, the SNP and Greens seem to have been built this project without caring one bit for how it would impact companies across Scotland.
The result is that small businesses are warning this scheme could burden them with huge amounts of bureaucracy.
The drinks industry are fearful that it could cripple them, when they are already struggling to get by in the difficult economic conditions we’re all facing just now.
Companies big and small say the DRS will hike their costs massively.
Some are warning that it will be so costly to trade in Scotland, where businesses will need unique packaging to comply with the scheme, that they just won’t bother.
Unanimously, small businesses who will be involved in the DRS say that it’s a shambles of a scheme.
The response from the Greens minister in charge of the scheme has only made things worse. Lorna Slater, the minister for the circular economy, is going to charge ahead with the plans even while the business community is in uproar.
She isn’t listening. She won’t take valid concerns onboard. She doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the details at all, lurching from one car crash interview to another. And that’s if she even bothers to show up. On the BBC Sunday Show, not one SNP or Green MSP would defend the DRS.
The root of the problem is that the SNP and Greens don’t understand business. They treat our economy as an afterthought. They dismiss the concerns of the very entrepreneurs and enterprising traders who create jobs and build businesses in this country.
If the powers that be had listened to business leaders and worked with them, the DRS could have been a roaring success.
But this SNP-Green scheme is such a chaotic mess that it has left businesses, and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, demanding the DRS is delayed until its fatal flaws are fixed.
