Legislative change: The Returo company will pay penalties for not reaching the collection targets of blankets, bottles and cans

The Returo company, which is the administrator appointed to manage the Guarantee-Return System regarding reusable primary packaging, will be penalized in the event of not reaching the collection targets assumed for blankets, bottles and cans, said Mircea Fechet, the Minister of the Environment, Water and Forests, following the meeting of yesterday of the Government, in which the modification and completion of HG 1074/2021 regarding SGR was approved.

Mircea Fechet, Minister of the Environment, Waters and Forests, stated:

"We still have 28 days until the SGR goes into operation, a system for which we are 100% prepared. We also added certain aspects related to some minor details, such as the way in which the cost of the guarantee is highlighted on the shelf, the fact that the packaging is returned anywhere in the country. One important thing to note: we have imposed penalties on Returo if it fails to meet the very ambitious targets we have outlined in the legislation. That company will be penalized like any other town hall or any sanitation company because that's the right thing to do."

The new change comes in the context where at the end of this month the SGR must become operational, and the normative and administrative acts that govern it should have been approved by political decision-makers a long time ago. The decision approved by the Government was put into decisional transparency since May, but the final act no longer coincides with the one from the spring, being completed with eight articles and having modified certain prices of the tariffs in the annexes. One of the new provisions even establishes the sanctioning of the company Returo, which is the administrator of the SGR.

With all the optimism of the Minister of the Environment regarding the operationalization of the SGR on November 30, we remind you that only recently the Returo company made transparent the contract regarding the involvement of administrative-territorial units in the collection and storage of the respective packaging. Moreover, Gemma Webb, CEO and President of the Returo company Board, recently told Economedia.ro that a premature launch of the SGR without testing its operation will lead to a decrease in trust among citizens.

Gemma Webb said: "A premature launch, in which the system is not tested, risks losing Romanians' confidence in this innovative project. (...) It is very important to note that the term allocated for the implementation of the system was three months shorter than the one originally proposed by RetuRO in the accreditation file, which created a more compressed program than anticipated".

The above statement comes in the context in which, during September, the same Gemma Webb requested the Government and the Ministry of the Environment to postpone by three months the date of operationalization of the SGR, but the Minister Mircea Fechet rejected this request stating that the industry and producers had a deadline of five years to prepare for the operationalization of this system.

It is certain that at this moment, the representatives of the Returo company, in which the Romanian state through the Ministry of the Environment owns 20% of the shares (ed. - the rest of the shares are owned by the Romanian Brewers' Association for the Environment - 30%, the Soft Drinks Sustainability - 30% and the Association of Retailers for the Environment - 20%), is in the process of signing contracts with producers and traders registered in the system (it is about more than 60,000 legal entities), a process that is not known if it will be concluded until on November 30, when the SGR will become operational.

According to the legislation in force and the statements of Minister Mircea Fechet, starting from November 30, 2023, Romanians will pay a guarantee of 50 money when they buy a bottled drink (water, soft drinks, beer, cider, wine, spirits) from a merchant. Later, after emptying the packaging, the consumer will have to bring it to one of the return points organized by the traders, and in return the consumer will receive back, on the spot, the value of the guarantee initially paid, without being conditioned by the presentation of the tax receipt.