“For so many years, our municipal waste system was, and still is, in so many cases, inefficient. We struggle to collect only a fraction of the recyclable materials. And when we look at the numbers, we are seeing that Romania is at the bottom half of European Union, because we are only collecting 13 percent of the waste.

So PET and other valuable materials ended up in the landfills every year, until the launch of the deposit-return system. Looking at the numbers for September, we had a collection rate of 81 percent, which in my opinion is a wonderful thing.

It’s probably the best thing that ever happened in Romania related, of course, to waste management and circular economy. My dream is not only to have really, really good numbers. And I’m sure that our DRS will be as good as any other DRS in the world. It’s just a matter of time,” Environment Minister Mircea Fechet said today at the conference organized by the Circular Economy Coalition and PETCORE Europe.

“I’m thinking about the investments, about the capital, about the new technologies that we will bring in Romania. And I’m sure that we have all the ingredients to transform Romania into a truly circular economy. And I’m hoping that not a single kilo of recyclable material will exit Romania, because if we will process it here, that means that we have new jobs, and we have new business opportunities.

Of course, I’m worried because I have read so much news related to the PET that’s coming from Asia, and that’s coming from China specifically. I think that we should identify mechanisms that will protect the European industry and prevent it from failing, because sometimes you just cannot compete with countries which have different rules related to the environment, related to the way we certificate the products.”