The Welsh Government has announced the appointment of Exchange for Change as the Deposit Management Organisation (DMO) for its Deposit Return Scheme (DRS).
In April, when Labour had majority control of the Senedd, the Welsh Government rejected Exchange for Change’s application to be run its DRS.
According to multiple reports, Exchange for Change, the DMO for the DRSs in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, was the only organisation to have submitted an application.
The decision was criticised by some of the UK’s biggest drinks producers and grocery retailers, including Coca-Cola, Tesco, and Carlsberg,
In the May elections, Plaid Cymru became the largest party in the Senedd and has now announced the decision to appoint Exchange for Change as the Welsh DRS’s scheme administrator.
Llŷr Gruffydd, the Cabinet Minister with responsibility for sustainable resource and waste management, said the appointment follows a ‘robost process’.
Exchange for Change, a business-led non-profit, will be responsible for designing and delivering the scheme’s infrastructure.
Gruffydd said the Welsh Government will work closely with Exchange for Change and its delivery partners to develop the return network, collection and processing infrastructure, producer registration arrangements, and operational systems ahead of the scheme’s launch in October 2027.
“I look forward to working with Exchange for Change and our delivery partners as we work to establish a DRS that works for Wales, and with those schemes being implemented in the other nations of the UK,” Gruffydd said.
Last year, Wales withdrew from developing an aligned DRS across the UK. In a written statement, Welsh Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies explained that Wales could not proceed with a DRS aligned across the UK due to issues caused by the UK Internal Market Act.
Circular Online learned that the Welsh Government withdrew due to time constraints that prevented the UK Government from considering a request for an exclusion from the UKIM Act.
Scotland’s DRS collapsed in 2023 after the then Conservative Government declined a request for full exclusion from the UKIM Act, which meant it could not include glass in its scheme.
Wales’s DRS is set to include glass as an in-scope material when it launches alongside the other UK nations’ schemes in October 2027.
However, there will be a four-year transition period where no deposit is charged on glass containers to manage interoperability with the other UK schemes. Glass containers will also be exempt from labelling during this period.
At the end of the transition period, the Welsh Government says it also plans to phase in reuse as part of the scheme.
