“Aligning the stars” is how the president of the Chamber of Industries, Alfredo Antía, defined the current stage of the Vale plan, promoted by the business association, and whose mission is to optimize the recovery of packaging and meet with the ambitious goals set by the Ministry of the Environment.
With the endorsement of the Ministry of the Environment, the Chamber of Industries of Uruguay began talks with the municipalities of the entire country to carry out the plan that they presented in February.
At that time, the Chamber of Industries of Uruguay (CIU) approached the Ministry of the Environment (MA) with the project worth, A plan of value generation for post-consumer packaging and packaging materials. The initiative attacks the recovery of containers from several points, one of the central ones is the deposit, return and reimbursement system, an incentive that will be offered to citizens for returned containers.
Although the amount is not defined, the projections of the Chamber of Industries indicate that between $3 and $5 will be given per container returned. Said amount will be charged as an additional at the time of purchaseas is currently the case with some glass or returnable plastic containers (such as those for soft drinks or beer).
The implementation of the plan supposes the coordination between the companies, the municipalities of the whole country and the Ministry of the Environment and there is already a schedule to which El Observador agreed that establishes the deadlines to follow.
The deadlines established by the Ministry of Environment are counted from August 8.
As arranged, 30 days later, on September 6 there should be a detailed implementation schedule by department that includes an executive summary of the plan for dissemination. Ninety days later, in November, a detail of the return and reimbursement deposit system is scheduled to be presented (the edge of the plan that will return money to the population for the return of certain containers such as cans, glass containers or tetra-pack) . At the end of the year, four months after August 8, a report on the progress of the municipalities with their communication plan is required and 180 days after the initial term, a progress report will have to be presented that includes criteria for the contribution of companies in investment costs and operating costs.
According to Antía in dialogue with Café & Negocios the deadlines “are meager”: “We will see how we can get closer to compliance,” he said.
The president of the CIU assured that they have already begun to contact the municipalities and the same was confirmed by the Minister of the Environment, Adrián Peña. However, the director of Environmental Development of the Municipality of Montevideo, Guillermo Moncecchi, said: “so far no one has spoken with us.”
round trips
After the Departmental Board declined the approval of the IDB loan, The Municipality of Montevideo presented as an initiative the charging of a fee to large companies that pour containers into the market to generate new income. In May 2022, Moncecchi and the director of Cleaning of the City Hall, Ignacio Lorenzo, raised it with the businessmen who rejected it outright. “They wanted to determine what was the co-participation of the companies in garbage samples in the city of Montevideo, we understood that it was crazy, we were absolutely skeptical and we rejected it,” said the president of the business union. “We met with the Municipality of Montevideo on that occasion,” Antía recalled and pointed out that he considers that this initiative is not going to advance. “We see that it is an enormous difficulty”, highlighted the head of the CIU.
Dismissing this proposal of the Intendancy by the businessmen, Antía pointed out that the law obliges them (to take care of the waste) individually, “as this is impossible to do, we presented the plan to the Ministry of the Environment to do it collectively” . Added to this is the obligation of the Municipality to collect waste, taking into account its departmental autonomy. “That’s why we are in this moment of aligning the stars: the interests of the departmental administrations, with the obligations of the companies with the result of the benefit for the environmentAntya concluded.
According to Antía, in the current chapter of the exchange, the different parties undertake to define what are the spheres of participation of each other.
Along the same lines, he pointed out that citizen education from an early age and available points in the different departments are key to fostering a real commitment in the community.
