Hospitality providers, such as takeaways, restaurants, bars and cafes, will form an integral part of the deposit return scheme. There are two categories that establishments such as these might fall into. 

A closed loop establishment is one where all containers are retained on-site. If you only serve drinks in single-use containers on your premises, you can operate a closed loop system. Hospitality businesses operating a closed loop system will not charge their customers the 20p deposit and do not need to accept returns of scheme containers purchased elsewhere.

Instead, they will reclaim the 20p deposit once all the empty scheme containers used on-site have been collected, verified and counted by the logistics services provider. The 20p deposit per scheme article is reimbursed by Circularity Scotland along with a handling fee, as part of closed loop payment terms.

As a closed loop hospitality provider, you are still required to register with Circularity Scotland, stating that you will operate closed loop. If a closed loop operates any form of takeaway on drink containers, it has to assume the responsibility of a return point, unless granted an exemption by Zero Waste Scotland.

For glass scheme articles, all closed loop hospitality providers will return these to Circularity Scotland in bulk via bins or manually in tote boxes, dependent on volume of glass collected. More information on the storage and handling of glass for the scheme can be found under Collections.

Reimbursements for each closed loop establishment will be made using direct credit electronic transfer. Invoices will be automatically generated by Circularity Scotland and will be self-billing based on data from the counting of scheme containers.

A dedicated mobile app will be available for you to provide consumption information by scanning container barcodes as they are placed in bins.

Find out about payment terms for closed loop establishments in the Cashflow section.

If a hospitality business serves drinks for takeaway, they need to follow the same procedure as all other retailers, charging the consumer 20p on scheme containers and operating as a return point. This is known as open loop.

Register as a return point