The Romanian DRS system uses a software solution from Sensoneo, a technology company based in Slovakia. The software works as a backbone of the entire system as it integrates all stakeholders and gathers data from all sources within the process chain. The Deposit Return Schemes increase the purity of material collected, leading to materials’ circularity and reduction of CO2 emissions. The Romanian scheme will cover plastic, glass, and metal beverage containers ranging from 0.1 to 3 Liters. The deposit per bottle will be 0,5 Romanian lei (approximately 0,1 €).
All legal entities that produce, import, or sell beverages in single-use containers are obliged to participate in the scheme. The official launch of the Deposit Return System is due on 30 November 2023. The Deposit Return System in Romania aims to achieve global prominence as the most comprehensive integrated system, distinguished by its remarkable complexity. The establishment of the DRS system faced complex challenges in multiple aspects, encompassing equipment setup, software integration, and the identification and securing of appropriate locations for regional centers.
The system operator is RetuRO, a consortium uniquely consisting of a combination of private entities (associations of beverage producers and retailers) with minor public participation (through the Romanian Ministry of Environment, Waters and Forests). RetuRO will manage around seven billion beverage containers annually with Romania struggling in Europe when it comes to the rate of recycling. As Cristian Mihai, IT Director of RetuRO, explained: “Despite many challenges, we managed to implement a very complex system in an unbelievably short time. We are talking about an extremely complex, modular system, which will have to not only support the information received from almost 80,000 economic operators but also correlate identification, stock, return, collection, invoicing, and reporting data for almost 7 billion packages. The novelty and the revolutionary nature of this system make it equally exciting and provocative.”
The role of Sensoneo in Romanian DRS
Sensoneo designed a unique and ready-to-integrate IT system for DRS that can be adapted to any specific needs of different countries and is agnostic with any return vending machine. In the preliminary phase, Sensoneo provided a market-mapping tool that enabled the most efficient DRS implementation including digital data collection and analysis from all entities, registration of entities and their beverages into the system, and automated digital contracting.
