“The implementation of the Deposit-Return System here in Romania is a critical element for the circular economy because it will enable us to collect 7 billion glass, plastic, and aluminium containers from around the country and turn them into natural resources that can be used again. It’s a key contributor to sustainability in Romania and a change to help improve the environment,” Gemma Webb, CEO Returo SGR said during Sustainability in Business Forum organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest and Sustainability-Today.

“It’s a huge project, 7 billion containers, collected from 80,000 retailers, supplying from 5,000 importers, producers etc., so the system is highly complex. That’s why we requested the Government an extension of three months to the implementation. The implementation is scheduled for November this year and after a detailed assessment, to really look at what was required to implement between now and November, it became painfully obvious that to have a solid foundation to start then it’s highly risky. The risk is if we start without a strong foundation, a premature start, and it doesn’t work initially, everybody will lose confidence in the system. It’s so important for Romania, we need the confidence to be there because we need everybody to work together. This is why requested the extension of three months.

I started in November last year as the first employee. My first thing was to bring in the team and start employing. Today, we have 40 employees and we’re continuing to recruit. By next year we will need 500 employees. We are going from a start-up to a fully operational company in a very short time.

The Deposit-Return System in Romania will be the second largest DRS system in Europe, behind Germany, and it will be the largest fully integrated system globally.”

Full recording of the conference HERE