‘We like it a lot’: how Romania created the largest deposit return scheme in the world

In the two years since the system was launched, beverage-packaging collection and recycling has risen to 94%

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 across cities and rural areas, Chitucescu has woven the country’s two-year-old deposit return system (DRS) into her routine.

It is a simple scheme: when buying soft drinks or alcoholic beverages, the customer pays an extra 0.50 Romanian leu (£0.09) per bottle and gets the money back when returning the packaging, cleaned and in its original shape, to a collection point ( usually the same shops where the goods were bought).

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, the chief executive 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. The returns included 4bn PET bottles, 2bn metal cans, and 1.5bn glass containers. More than 500,000 tonnes of high-quality recyclable materials have been collected. “We are the largest fully integrated deposit return system globally.”

The scale of Romania’s turnaround is even more striking given where the country started. For more than a decade, the country has sat at the bottom of Europe’s recycling statistics. Between 2011 and 2021, the country’s municipal waste recycling rate barely budged, drifting between 11% and 14% while the rest of the EU climbed ahead.

Romania ranked last in the EU for circular material usage, with only 1% of materials being recycled and reintroduced into the economy in 2021.

But in 2018 the government began discussions about the scheme; in 2022 RetuRO began work, and on an extremely tight timeline including the construction of nine counting and sorting centres nationwide, the scheme launched in late 2023.

“Now we have one of the largest, most complex logistics networks in Romania,” said Webb.

In fact starting later than other countries may have been an advantage, says Raul Pop, the secretary of state in the environment ministry and a waste policy expert, because Romania could use modern software and traceability tools.

It is on a return-to-retail model: shops that sell the containers must either install reverse vending machines or process the packaging manually. There is also a financial incentive for them, which helps them cover processing costs, and RetuRO reinvests all profits back into operations.

A nationwide advertising campaign used the Romanian traditional dance, the hora, people holding hands and dancing in a circle, to symbolise shared responsibility, and a recent study found that 90% of Romanians say they have used the system at least once and 60% return packaging regularly.

Other countries, Pop explained, “suffer from their own inertia” because they introduced their systems decades ago and are now stuck with outdated models. For them, shifting to new systems risks confusing consumers, even if it could improve collection rates.

Countries such as Poland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Moldova and Serbia have had meetings with RetuRO and the Romanian authorities looking to learn best practices as they prepare to implement a similar system.

Romania has also introduced a supportive legal framework, which means retailers can be penalised if they refuse returns – even the smallest village shops must accept containers if they sell the products or they risk fines, while big chains have automated return points.

After the success with beverage containers, there are plans to expand the system to cover other types of packaging. “If you can put a bottle of water, you can also put a bottle of vinegar, a jar or a milk carton,” said Alexandra Țuțuianu of Ecoteca, Romania’s first waste management NGO.

But when it comes to other types of packaging such as crisp packets, which contain flexible plastic, or shampoo bottles, RetuRO and the government say they do not want to rush.

Webb said: “We are still new and it is still premature to add more into the system,” adding that any addition would require the same level of research that went into beverage containers and collaboration with industry partners who produce the materials.

Environmental groups have praised Romania’s system, but warn that it covers only a small slice of the country’s overall waste stream. “It’s the largest environmental programme, an example of good practice, we praise it, we like the system a lot, but it is not enough, it does not solve the waste problem in Romania,” said Țuțuianu.

Beverage packaging accounts for just 5% of all waste generated in Romania. The country recorded a total recycling rate of only 12% in 2024, according to Eurostat, and has never exceeded 14%. Even with a hypothetical 100% return rate for beverage containers, the overall waste recycling rate would only rise marginally.

Re-use, Elena Rastei of the NGO Zero Waste Romania argued, needed to be looked at more closely.

“Collection solves the problem of visible waste, but re-use changes its nature. When packaging circulates – returned, washed, refilled – it becomes a resource, not waste. A single, reusable bottle can replace 20 to 50 single-use bottles, cut carbon emissions, and support a truly circular economy.”

For now, while Romania has become a policy model abroad, for Chitucescu, the success is not measured in billions of bottles but in what she does not see any more in her community.

When heavy rain falls, bottles are no longer swept into streams. When she walks through the village, the streets are free of the rubbish that once littered them.

Her brother, who lives in Spain, is envious. He tells her they do not have a similar system there, and it is one of the rare things Romania is doing exceptionally well.

“He’s jealous of us, and he’s right, it’s beneficial for us and for the environment,” said Chitucescu.