As more jurisdictions consider introducing deposit legislation over the next few years, stakeholders are wondering whether a deposit return system (DRS) that employs a unique digital-coding approach (referred to commonly as ‘digital DRS’ or ‘DDRS’) should be considered instead of, or at least in addition to, a traditional scheme that uses reverse vending machines and digital barcode identification to verify returned drinks containers.
DDRS has been defined by the UK’s Industry Working Group as “an alternative…system largely based on kerbside collection of drinks containers on which a unique serialisation code (to individual containers) is printed. Under a DDRS the deposit on a drinks container would be redeemed by the consumer scanning the unique serialisation code via a smartphone application, which would also notify the supporting IT system that the deposit could not be redeemed again.”
In January 2022, Reloop released a new fact sheet titled Digital deposit return systems: What you need to know. This fact sheet offered an overview of the key components of the DDRS concept and examined some of the key questions needing to be addressed before real consideration can be given to incorporating these technologies into a DRS. It also presented a high-level summary of the DDRS trials that had taken place to date.
In this new fact sheet, Reloop provides an update on recent developments in DDRS, including an update on DDRS trials. We also look at new research that’s been done to examine the feasibility of implementing DDRS at scale and summarise some of the key findings.