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Packaging collected from consumers in Romania under the RetuRo Deposit-Return System (DRS) will exceed 100 million items in April 2024, Anca Marinescu, corporate affairs and communication manager at RetuRo, told a Pria Environment conference on Tuesday.
"There is talk about this milestone of 100 million packaging items that has been reached. I hope that next week, when we publish the official figures, we will have a surprise and it will be over 100 million, because at the moment we are using estimates, but there is also a manual collection part that we will have next week. Then I hope this month we will get past the 100-million mark. But these numbers, after all, don't mean much if you look at them out of context. I was watching a TV station at the weekend that every day the Danube waters are polluted with 150 kg of PET bottles. I think we should put all these figures in context, in the context in which the system has begun and can contribute enormously to the good of us all. We don't want to think about what will happen in a year, when they will probably be recovered, as it happened in other markets, over 70-80% of the packaging released to the market and we will talk about billions," Marinescu said.
According to the RetuRo representative, currently, of the over 80,000 DRS enrolled retailers, more than half can take over packaging directly from consumers.
"In terms of infrastructure development, it has always been RetuRo's commitment to develop packaging processing infrastructure, as new and new packaging enters the market, with packaging logo, with warranty and as they are collected from consumers. Currently, we are operating three centres, and the last one opened is in Brasov County. Moving forward, we will open four more centres in Bacau, near Bucharest, in Otopeni, in Prahova and in Craiova. We are trying this summer to solve this problem. Solutions are being sought at this time. As for the operators who have signed up to the system, the figures have increased a bit. We have almost 80,000 registered retailers, of which over 44,000 can take over packaging from consumers, because they have signed contracts with RetuRo and are ready."
A recent Kantar survey shows that over half of Romanians have adopted the DRS scheme and 25% of them say they frequently return packages with the DRS symbol at collection points.
Official data reveal that in the first four months since the official launch of DRS nationwide, more than 100 million package items were returned by consumers and more than one billion package items were released to the market by manufacturers.
