Irish consumers missed out on €66.7 million last year when they failed to cash in their deposits for soft drink containers through the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS).
Re-turn’s 2024 annual report shows the failure to redeem these deposits was the chief reason behind the State-backed firm recording a pretax surplus of €51.3 million last year.
Established by the Government, Re-Turn began its DRS operations on February 1st, 2024 with the aim to significantly increase the recycling rates of bottles and cans.
Last year, 877.85 million containers were returned, made up of 433.2 million plastic bottles and 444.6 million cans.
RM Block
Re-turn recorded revenues of €114.4 million in 2024. This included the €66.7 million in unredeemed deposits and €47.7 million made up of €17.2 million from the sale of material and €30.5 million from ‘producer fees’.
The company’s 2024 costs totalled €62.2 million, made up of direct collection and recycling costs of €46.5 million and administrative expenses of €15.7 million, which included a spend of €4.6 million on “marketing, communications, and public awareness”.
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The report says “unredeemed deposits are an expected and routine scenario for deposit return schemes and it was anticipated that in the initial transition period redemptions would be low and therefore there would be a high level of unredeemed deposits”. Unredeemed deposits can be returned at any time and do not expire.
The report for the not-for-profit states, “the fees from unredeemed containers are being reinvested in a number of ways”.
These include paying off initial scheme set-up costs, infrastructure development, consumer education campaigns and contributing to its legally required contingency reserve.
Income from unredeemed deposits “is expected to significantly reduce as the scheme reaches its targeted redemptions of 90 per cent in the coming years . . . Every 1 per cent increase equates to around 19 million containers.”
In a statement Re-turn said there is a current return rate of 76 per cent through the scheme, and 91 per cent overall, for containers placed on the market. “This is a significant increase from 49 per cent of containers recycled prior to the introduction of the scheme”.
