10 tips to set up a Deposit Return Scheme in the workplace

Do the maths before you plan anything

Take a 250-person office where each person finishes one canned or bottled drink on a working day, across 220 working days. That's 55,000 containers a year — £11,000 of deposit passing through the building. Scale it down to a 50-person floor and you're still at £2,200.

Here's the part most coverage of this skips: the deposit is theoretically recoverable. The hours spent recovering it are not. Someone has to keep containers separate from general recycling, store them until there's enough to move, load them, take them somewhere that accepts them, and process whatever comes back. Do that badly and you've paid a price rise and thrown the refund away. Do it well and you've created a recurring job that didn't exist before. Both are costs; only one shows up on an invoice.

Scale the figures to your own headcount before you read the tips — the answer for 40 people and the answer for 400 aren't the same answer.

The 10 tips

1. Count before you plan

Start with volume, not bins. Pull 12 months of drinks invoices and work out in-scope containers per week — the weekly figure tells you whether this is a five-minute job or a standing task. Split by type: cans, PET bottles and anything in glass behave differently under the scheme (see tip 6), and a blended number hides that.

Then map who's actually buying — central procurement, individual teams, the vending machine, people bringing their own from the shop downstairs. Only some of that volume is yours to change, and the tips below apply differently to each. Ten minutes of counting decides whether the rest of this is worth doing at all.

2. Confirm the scheme applies to you, and name an owner

In-scope containers are single-use drinks containers made wholly or mainly from PET plastic, aluminium or steel, 150ml–3 litres. Glass, HDPE milk bottles and cartons are out. The obligation to host a return point sits with retailers selling in-scope drinks — an ordinary office, studio or warehouse that doesn't sell drinks has no hosting obligation at all. (Retail premises of 100m² or less in urban areas are automatically exempt from that duty in the first place.)

Once you know it applies to you operationally rather than legally, name an owner in writing before it starts. An unowned weekly task becomes nobody's task, and then it becomes a bin — this is the single most common way schemes like this fail: everyone agrees it's a good idea, nobody's named, and within six weeks the containers are going out with general waste. Name a role, not a person, so it survives someone leaving, and write down what the job actually involves — how often, how long, what happens when they're on leave.

3. Check what your existing contracts already cover

Before you build anything new, find out what you're already paying for.

Waste contract. If you're in serviced or managed space, waste is usually the landlord's or managing agent's, under a contract you may not have read. It's entirely possible deposit containers are covered, entirely possible they're explicitly excluded, and quite likely nobody has looked. Ask in writing: are deposit-bearing containers in scope of the current waste service, and if collected, who receives the refund? That last question is the one that gets skipped and has money attached.

Vending and catering. Where drinks are sold on-site, someone in that chain becomes responsible for the deposit and possibly the returns — that could be you, but it's often the vending operator, caterer or micro-market supplier. Ask three things in writing before renewal: how they'll handle the 20p at point of sale, whether they'll apply for a voluntary return point on your premises, and what they expect from you in floor space. A contract signed without this in it gets renegotiated on their terms in 2027.

Voluntary return points. The government's joint policy statement names who can apply to host one — hospitality venues, food-to-go stores, schools, gyms, sports and recreation centres, community centres, mobile caterers. An ordinary workplace that doesn't sell drinks isn't on that list. If you run a canteen, café or gym site, an application is worth it; otherwise treat a self-run payout as unconfirmed. Handling fee arrangements for return-point operators haven't been published either, so don't build a business case on being paid to run one.

4. Separate at source, one bin per zone

A container in general recycling is a refund already lost — once mixed, nobody's unmixing it. Placement beats signage every time: a labelled bin next to the one people already use captures most of the volume; a correctly labelled bin down the corridor captures almost none, however good the poster is.

Put the deposit bin beside the general waste bin, not somewhere separate — the choice needs to be visible at the moment someone has an empty in hand, or general waste wins by default. Label it with a picture of an intact can and bottle, not a sentence about scheme scope; people sort in about two seconds, and they sort by image.

Think zone by zone rather than by where bins currently sit: tea points, canteen, meeting rooms, reception, and the exit — the one people forget, and the one that matters most on a hybrid site where the route back to a return point relies on people carrying containers out with them. On larger sites, several smaller points beat one big one; if someone has to walk past general waste to reach the deposit bin, they won't.

5. Keep barcodes readable — don't crush

A container refunds because it scans, whatever it's made of. Crushing is a false economy: flattening cans saves storage space and costs you the deposit on every one where the barcode tears, folds or scuffs past reading. The same goes for stamped-on bottles and labels that have soaked off in a wet bin.

In-scope containers carry a new DRS barcode and logo and can't legally be sold before 1 October 2027. At a return point, compaction happens in the reverse vending machine after it reads the barcode — so keep balers and compactors away from your collection stream entirely. Tell people explicitly not to crush; it's counter-intuitive, so it needs saying. Keep the collection point dry. Storage volume goes up as a result — that's tip 7.

6. Know what's in scope and what's not, by nation

Wales is where most published guidance is currently wrong. A lot of material online still says Wales withdrew from the scheme — that was the position in November 2024 and has since been reversed. Wales launches on the same date as the rest of the UK and includes glass, but glass initially carries no deposit, to avoid forcing immediate labelling changes. If you operate across borders, this table is the difference between one process and two.

Source: House of Commons Library briefing CBP-10453; BBC Wales.

7. Work out storage volume and the emptying rhythm together

Uncompacted containers take up more room than the same volume in mixed recycling, because you're not crushing them (tip 5) — and two weeks of empties is a bigger physical footprint than people expect. Work it out properly: weekly container count from tip 1, multiplied by how long you intend to go between returns. Find that space before you announce anything, or the alternative is bags accumulating in a corridor — a fast way for a scheme to lose internal support in its first month.

Pick the emptying day before you pick the bin size, then size the bin to the gap between collections. A full bin is the fastest way to kill a collection system: once it overflows, everything goes into general waste and people stop trying. Brief the cleaning contract explicitly — if your provider hasn't been told the deposit stream is separate, they'll bag it with everything else and the 20p goes with it.

8. Choose your return route deliberately

There are broadly three ways containers leave the building, and they cost very differently in staff time.

• Someone takes them to a return point. Cheapest in money, most expensive in hours, and the hours recur forever. Fine at low volume; stops being fine faster than expected.

• Your waste contractor handles it. Ask whether they will, what they charge, and — again — who receives the refund. That answer determines whether it's a service or a transfer of your money.

• A third-party bulk collection service. Likely to emerge as a market once the scheme is live, but doesn't exist pre-launch — don't plan around a price that hasn't been set yet.

Whichever route, price it in hours as well as pounds and compare it against the deposit you actually expect to recover. Several routes cost more than they return.

9. Decide where the 20p goes, and say so

Refunds arrive as small, irregular amounts, and small irregular amounts with no destination become a finance reconciliation problem instead of a benefit. Agree the destination before the first return: back to the budget that bought the drinks, petty cash, a nominated charity, or a staff fund. All are defensible; having no answer isn't.

Settle two things with finance at the same time: how the refund is received and recorded (a slip, a transfer, a credit against an invoice) and who reconciles it — and whether the amounts are material enough to be worth tracking individually at all, which for some organisations is honestly no. If the money's going to staff, say so early, and publish the running total somewhere people see it — a number on the kitchen screen does more for participation than any poster.

10. Reduce the inflow

Every tip above is about handling containers well. The cheaper move is having fewer to handle.

Containers you never buy carry no deposit, need no sorting, no storage, no return trip and no owner. A mains-fed water dispenser removes the container, the deposit and the job at once, for the portion of your drinks volume that's water — in most offices, the largest single portion.

Where this doesn't apply, and it matters more than the pitch. It does nothing for branded cans bought for client meetings, a canteen or vending operation that resells drinks, or what people carry in from the shop on the corner. And if your volume is genuinely low — a small team, a couple of cases a month — the honest answer is that returning is a minor chore, and installing anything to avoid it is disproportionate.

Across Aquablu's installed base, a single system avoids around 12,000 containers a year. That figure is worth converting twice: once into deposits never paid, and once into the return trips, storage weeks and staff hours that never had to be scheduled. The second conversion is usually the larger of the two, and it's the one that doesn't stop.

Your DRS readiness timeline

The UK isn't first. The Netherlands' scheme has been running long enough to have real numbers behind it, and one lesson transfers directly: Dutch offices were never legally obliged to do anything, yet within two years the Netherlands had 6,336 redemption points, 85% of them supermarkets, with offices and workplaces named as an explicit expansion target (CE Delft, January 2025). One side-effect showed up in both the Netherlands and Ireland and is worth budgeting for if your bins are external or publicly accessible: Dublin City Council estimated €500,000–€1m in additional street clean-up costs after Ireland's scheme launched (Irish Times, 23 February 2026).

Now – December 2026: measure. Count your in-scope containers from 12 months of invoices; multiply by £0.20 and put the annual figure in front of finance before it lands mid-budget-year; audit one representative week of your mixed recycling stream to see what you're currently losing by default; map who buys (central procurement, caterer, departments, events team — uncontrolled buying is where the deposit cost hides); and check which nations your sites sit in, since Wales runs different glass rules.

January – March 2027: decide. Get written answers from your drinks supplier — will the deposit appear as a separate invoice line, will they collect empties on the delivery round, do they intend to offer take-back. Ask Exchange for Change directly whether your premises can be authorised as a voluntary return point, in writing, flagging any part of your site that sells drinks. Decide your strategy in one line — comply and manage the containers, or reduce the number entering the building; most facilities managers do both, but only the second removes the cost rather than administering it. Check your waste contract's renewal date and negotiate DRS handling in now if it renews after mid-2027.

April – June 2027: contract and specify. Put DRS clauses into every drinks and catering contract you renew. Specify the collection point — secure, internal, near the point of consumption, a bag or bin a cleaner can handle that can't be raided, never outside. If you're reducing containers, install before the summer: plumbing and joinery in an occupied office needs a booked window, and anything ordered in Q3 2027 lands after the deadline. Brief the cleaning contractor explicitly that in-scope containers are now a segregated stream with a cash value.

July – September 2027: dry run. Confirm your suppliers are registered and labelled in time — not your obligation, but their delay becomes your supply problem. Run the collection point for a month before it counts: volume, fill rate, who empties it, where the bags go, who reconciles the money. Tell staff once, plainly, what the 20p is, where the bin is, and where the money goes — naming the destination is what made the Dutch version stick. Ask your supplier what happens to unlabelled stock still on hand on 1 October.

From October 2027: measure again. Reconcile month one against your baseline: deposits paid, containers returned, deposits recovered, deposits lost. Report the lost figure, not the recovered one — unredeemed deposit is the number that justifies changing the supply, and it's the number nobody reports. Re-check the voluntary-return-point authorisation position every quarter, since Exchange for Change's policy on it doesn't exist yet and may change the answer above.