In the picturesque Transylvanian village of Pianu de Jos, 51-year-old Dana Chitucescu has transformed her weekly routine into an environmental mission. Every week, she collects a sack filled with empty PET bottles, aluminium cans and glass containers and walks them to her local shop.
From Environmental Laggard to Recycling Leader
What might seem like a simple errand represents part of a remarkable national transformation that has seen Romania leap from having one of Europe's worst recycling records to achieving an impressive 94% collection and recycling rate for beverage packaging in just two years.
"It's a zero to hero story," declares Gemma Webb, CEO of RetuRO, the company operating the system through a public-private partnership with beverage packaging manufacturers and the Romanian state. "The products are clean, there is little contamination, they can be recycled easily and we have full traceability as well."
The Simple System Driving Big Changes
The scheme operates on straightforward principles: consumers pay an extra 0.50 RON (approximately £0.09) per bottle when purchasing soft drinks or alcoholic beverages, then receive this deposit back when they return the cleaned, undamaged packaging to collection points, typically the same shops where the products were bought.
For Chitucescu, this system generates about 40 RON weekly from recycling her own and another family's bottles. "That covers the food for my seven cats," she explains. "It's a great system - everyone in our village uses it, there's always a queue at the shop."
The statistics demonstrate the scheme's extraordinary impact. Between its launch in November 2023 and the end of September 2025, Romanians returned approximately 7.5 billion beverage containers, including:
- 4 billion PET bottles
- 2 billion metal cans
- 1.5 billion glass containers
This has resulted in the collection of more than 500,000 tonnes of high-quality recyclable materials, making Romania's system the largest fully integrated deposit return scheme globally.
Overcoming a Challenging History
The scale of this achievement becomes even more impressive considering Romania's previous environmental record. For over a decade, the country consistently ranked at the bottom of European recycling statistics. Between 2011 and 2021, municipal waste recycling rates stagnated between 11% and 14%, while other EU nations progressed significantly.
In 2021, Romania occupied last place in the EU for circular material usage, with only 1% of materials being recycled and reintroduced into the economy.
Raul Pop, secretary of state in the environment ministry and waste policy expert, suggests that starting later than other nations might have provided an advantage. "Other countries suffer from their own inertia because they introduced their systems decades ago and are now stuck with outdated models," he explains.
Romania's delayed implementation allowed the country to utilise modern software and traceability tools from the outset, creating one of the largest and most complex logistics networks in the country.
International Recognition and Future Expansion
The success hasn't gone unnoticed internationally. Countries including Poland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Moldova and Serbia have held meetings with RetuRO and Romanian authorities, seeking to learn best practices as they prepare to implement similar systems.
Following the triumph with beverage containers, plans are underway to expand the system to cover other packaging types. Alexandra Țuțuianu of Ecoteca, Romania's first waste-management NGO, notes: "If you can put a bottle of water, you can also put a bottle of vinegar, a jar or a milk carton."
However, both RetuRO and the government advocate a cautious approach to expansion. Gemma Webb emphasises: "We are still new and it is still premature to add more into the system. Any addition would require the same level of research that went into beverage containers."
Limitations and Future Challenges
While environmental groups praise the system as an example of good practice, they caution that it addresses only a small portion of Romania's overall waste problem. Beverage packaging constitutes just 5% of all waste generated in Romania.
The country recorded a total recycling rate of only 12% in 2024 according to Eurostat, never having exceeded 14%. Even with perfect return rates for beverage containers, the overall waste recycling percentage would increase only marginally.
Elena Rastei of Zero Waste Romania argues for greater focus on re-use rather than just collection: "When packaging circulates – returned, washed, refilled – it becomes a resource, not waste. A single, reusable bottle can replace 20 to 50 single-use bottles."
Tangible Community Benefits
For residents like Dana Chitucescu, the scheme's success manifests in visible environmental improvements. "When heavy rain falls, bottles aren't swept into the streams anymore. When I walk through the village, the streets are free of the rubbish that once littered them."
Her brother living in Spain expresses envy at the system's effectiveness – one of the rare areas where Romania now leads. "He's jealous of us, and he's right," Chitucescu concludes. "It's beneficial for us and for the environment."
Romania's recycling revolution demonstrates how well-designed environmental policies, combined with public engagement and modern infrastructure, can transform a nation's ecological footprint within an remarkably short timeframe.
