In 2022, Romania recycled just 12 percent of its beverage containers. Plastic bottles were a familiar sight on roadsides, riverbanks, and public spaces across the country. Romania consistently ranked among the weakest performers on recycling in the European Union.
Two years later, the transformation is so complete that the CEO of Romania's deposit return operator says something that would have been unthinkable before: you go to Romania now and you simply do not see a bottle anywhere.
The change began on November 30, 2023, when Romania launched a nationwide Deposit Return System (DRS) for beverage containers — plastic bottles, glass bottles, and aluminium cans. The system, operated by RetuRO, a not-for-profit company established through a partnership of retailers, beverage producers, and the Romanian state, works on a simple principle: consumers pay a small deposit when buying a drink in an eligible container, and reclaim it by returning the container to a reverse vending machine — automated collection points now installed in supermarkets, hypermarkets, and local stores across the country.
The results exceeded every projection. In peak summer months, 94 percent of all containers sold were returned. In January 2026, the system recorded a return rate of 108 percent — meaning Romanians were returning more containers than were being sold that month, as people retrieved old bottles from storage. By early 2026, over 9 billion containers had been returned since launch, with six in ten Romanians using the system every single week and nine out of ten having used it at least once.
Gemma Webb, CEO of RetuRO, describes it as a zero-to-hero story and credits not just the infrastructure but a fundamental shift in how Romanians think about recycling. The system is now the world's largest fully integrated deposit return scheme — and other countries are studying it closely as a model for how quickly public behaviour can change when the right incentives are in place.