Happy returns Romanians see value of recycling

The country that was once the EU's poorest performer for recycling now sees 94% of its beverage packaging being returned

- Andrei Popoviciu BUCHAREST

I In the Transylvanian village of Pianu de Jos, 51-year-old Dana Chitucescu gathers a sack of empty polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, aluminium cans and glass every week and takes it to her local shop. Like millions of Romanians, Chitucescu has woven the country's two-year-old deposit return system (DRS) into her routine.

It's a simple scheme: when you buy soft drinks or alcoholic beverages, you pay an extra 0.50 leu (11c) per bottle and get the money back when you return the packaging, cleaned and in its original shape, to a collection point.

Chitucescu makes about 40 leu a week from recycling her and another family's bottles. "That covers the food for my seven cats," she said. "It's a great system, everyone in our village uses it, there's always a queue at the shop." Her weekly walk is one tiny part of a national shift that, until recently, seemed impossible. Romania's recycling rates were among the lowest in the EU, but in the two years since the scheme launched, beverage-packaging collection and recycling has skyrocketed to 94%.

"It is a zero to hero story," said Gemma Webb, CEO of RetuRO, the company running the system in a public-private partnership with beverage packaging manufacturers and the state. "The products are clean, there is little contamination, they can be recycled easily and we have full traceability as well, so we know every bottle that goes on the market." Romanians returned about 7.5bn beverage containers between the system's launch in November 2023 and the end of September 2025, according to the company. "We are the largest fully integrated deposit return system globally," Webb said.