Business Review’s Environmental & Sustainability Summit 2025 takes place on 24 September at the Pullman Hotel in Bucharest, bringing together leading voices from business, government, finance, and civil society to address the defining challenge of our time: building a sustainable, resilient economy and society. Gemma Webb, CEO at RetuRO SGR, accepted to answer to a few questions about the Deposit-Return System.
How has collection activity evolved to date?
After an exponential increase last summer, the average return rate has maintained around 80% over the last 12 months, a clear sign that the Deposit-Return System has reached a more mature level, as operational flows and processes have been optimized, the collection infrastructure developed, and the Romanian citizens got involved and made the returning of DRS packaging a constant habit.
July registered the highest volume to date, with more than 580 million beverage containers returned. In total, over 6.3 billion containers have been collected through the Deposit-Return System since its launch, preventing huge volumes of packaging from ending up in landfills and helping to create a cleaner environment nationwide.
A project of this scale proves that real change is possible when consumers, retailers, producers, and public authorities work together for a common goal. This shared responsibility has enabled the Deposit-Return System to expand quickly and overcome its early challenges.
The Deposit-Return System has created an infrastructure that contributes to the protection of the environment, supports the economy, and helps the country move forward in building a circular economy. At the same time, it helps Romania meet European recycling targets and reflects the country’s broader commitment to a greener future.
How has the Deposit-Return System influenced the recycling market?
The Deposit-Return System has reshaped Romania’s recycling market. What started as an ambitious policy has, in less than two years, become a fundamental shift in how beverage packaging is managed. In a short time, we have built a nationwide system that makes more efficient use of resources, ensures full traceability of every returned container, and provides the local industry with a steady supply of high-quality secondary raw materials—PET, glass, and aluminium.
With this infrastructure, Romania has been able to reduce its dependence on imported secondary raw materials and has opened the path for expanding national recycling capacity. A key milestone was reached last year, when, for the first time, Romania no longer needed to import PET, as the volume collected through the system was sufficient to fully supply local recycling plants.
The impact of the Deposit-Return System goes beyond recycling alone. The DRS has also boosted demand for logistics, tracking technologies, and IT solutions, creating opportunities for innovation and growth. These changes are expected also to attract more investment and bring lasting economic benefits.
What are the main challenges you are facing in your current work?
A Deposit-Return System, like any development and initiative that involves such complexity and nationwide reach, requires continuous calibration and improvement in order to remain aligned with the needs of the market. This is not unique to Romania. Similar systems across Europe and beyond have gone through comparable refinement processes in their early years. What truly sets Romania apart is the speed and scale of implementation. The system was rolled out nationwide in just 12 months, compared with two or three years in other countries, and today it stands as the most extensive integrated DRS in the world, engaging over 19 million consumers, tens of thousands of retailers, producers, importers, and state authorities in one coordinated national effort.
The system is working effectively, but there are still challenges, especially in rural areas. One of our current priorities is to ensure easy and convenient access to citizens in both urban and rural areas. While the collection infrastructure in urban areas has developed more extensively, there is still more work to do in rural areas, where collection points are not always available and easily accessible. Small retailers in rural communities play a crucial role in this effort, as they represent the primary access point to the DRS for consumers by organizing and managing collection points. To support them, RetuRO is investing in tailored solutions designed to ease both logistical and financial pressures.
One such initiative is the introduction of a mobile Reverse Vending Machine (RVM) solution, aimed for small shops in rural areas that collect DRS containers manually. This solution supports small retailers in their DRS-related activities and operations by reducing the logistical and financial pressures, while at the same time increasing efficiency, transparency and predictability. By the end of this year, the mobile RVM solution will be rolled out across 10 counties where retailer participation in the system has been more limited.
While we are committed to continue to invest and deploy various solutions and initiatives meant to support retailers, especially the small ones, in adopting the DRS and easily integrating the system in their activity, their active involvement, participation and constant feedback are extremely important for reaching this objective. So we ensure retailers that they have a trustworthy partner in RetuRO, who can guide and support them in adopting the DRS.
Looking ahead, we will also continue to focus on consolidating the Deposit-Return System into a mature, high-performing national infrastructure. We are committed to optimizing logistics and operational flows to strengthen predictability and efficiency, while reinforcing transparency and deepening collaboration with all our stakeholders.
How do you estimate that the amount collected will evolve in the coming years?
Legislation itself sets the collection targets for the DRS packaging, which are even more ambitious starting from 2026, with 85% for glass, and 90% for both plastic and metal containers.
The experience of other European countries with long-established systems, such as Germany or the Nordics, shows us that such results are possible when consumer habits are supported by a strong infrastructure. After several years, return rates have stabilized at over 90% in these countries, setting a good example and benchmark for the deposit-return schemes. Romania has made rapid progress in a remarkably short time, creating the conditions to follow the same path and position itself as a reliable European partner in meeting the EU’s long-term sustainability goals. However, for us, as administrator of the Deposit-Return System in Romania, the consolidation and the continuous optimization of the system in order to ensure its efficiency and effectiveness for each stakeholder will continue to be key priorities, while also striving to reach such ambitious targets.
Beyond achieving high return rates, the Deposit-Return System is designed to deliver wider benefits to the circular economy: reducing the volume of waste that ends up in landfills, providing local industry with a steady supply of high-quality secondary raw materials, and building a responsible culture towards the environment at the societal level. From our perspective, the Deposit-Return System is far more than an operational mechanism; it is a long-term investment in Romania’s future. It is a chance to protect the environment, strengthen the national economy, and drive a cultural transformation toward more sustainable habits that will benefit generations to come.