ECO Student, a project initiated by the ECOTECA Association in partnership with ING Bank Romania and TOMRA Collection Romania, is continuing this autumn with a series of activations supported by Cooler. The program aims to encourage separate waste collection and circular economy education in universities by installing automated collection systems and directly engaging students.

Throughout October, as the new academic year gets underway, the ECO Student x Cooler roadshow will visit four universities across Romania, with activities dedicated to students.

The first stop will take place on October 8–9 at the “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iasi, followed by Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca on October 13–15 and the Bucharest University of Economic Studies on October 21–23. The series will conclude on October 27–29 at the Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest.

For three days at each university, students will be invited to return DRS containers and take part in the activities organized on campus.

The mechanism is simple: students return at least 20 Deposit Return System (DRS) containers to the reverse vending machine (RVM) installed on campus, keep the voucher issued by the machine and present it at the campaign stand together with their student ID. Eligible participants will receive campaign prizes, subject to availability and in accordance with the campaign rules.

Through the campaign, ECO Student and Cooler aim to make packaging returns part of students’ everyday routines and demonstrate how a simple action, repeated on a daily basis, can have a significant impact across the entire university community.

More than half a million containers returned in one academic year

The new series of activations builds on the development of ECO Student’s collection infrastructure and its information and awareness component, which accompanies each collection point.

During the 2025–2026 academic year, students at the nine universities where the program is currently implemented returned 502,789 containers through the ten automated collection systems installed across the campuses.

Plastic containers accounted for 59.2% of the total, metal containers for 28.9%, and glass containers for 11.9%. Plastic and metal therefore represented 88.1% of all containers collected through the ECO Student infrastructure.

The results indicate that students use Romania’s Deposit Return System when collection infrastructure is accessible and integrated into the spaces they visit every day. Placing reverse vending machines near dormitories, lecture halls and cafeterias reduces the time and distance required to return containers and helps turn the practice into a regular habit.

“The more than 500,000 containers returned during the last academic year show us that collection infrastructure works when it is placed in the locations where students spend their time every day. Through the ECO Student x Cooler activations, we want to make this infrastructure more visible, encourage students to use it and maintain the information component that accompanies each collection point,” said Petra Șerbănescu, Project Manager at the ECOTECA Association.