Dr. Dominic Hogg:

We have had discussions with small retailers in the UK, involving a similar discussion about a deposit refund scheme. We carried out a report for an NGO around the impact of deposit refund systems on small retailers. There are good systems and bad systems. We always want to design a system well, and the Repak report makes some very positive contributions in that respect. The good systems will always pay some form of handling fee to the retailers. There may be a cost. A reverse vending machine does not have to be in place. Manual take back could be done as well. One could be paid to recompense for the take-back of that material. The gut instinct of governments is often to exempt small and medium-sized enterprises. Imagine there was a deposit scheme coming in and that every person who returns a container gets 15, 20 or 25 cent back. Do retailers want them to come back to their stores? The footfall argument is a really important one for the small retailers, and if this system is going to come into place I suspect that the small retailers would prefer to be part of it rather than out of it, as long as it is well designed.