The Ministry of the Environment is advancing in the plan that will allow the adequate management of containers that today are not returned by society.
The implementation of the plan It supposes the coordination between the companies, the municipalities of the whole country and the Ministry of Environment.
In a video published this Monday by the journalist Marcelo Umpiérrez, the Minister of the Environment, Adrián Peña, is seen showing the operation of the new machines that will process cans, glass and PET.
?❗️?? #NOW Minister Peña shows one of the receiving machines for plastic, glass and cans, which will pay the person who disposes of these items. He gives a ticket that is exchanged for $$. They will be operational in Uruguay. Agreements will be signed with large surfaces pic.twitter.com/nNozAjAWly
— Marcelo Umpierrez (@emekavoces) November 28, 2022
Just like today with returnable bottlesthe machine receives the number of containers and indicates the amount to be returned, then issue a ticket and with that voucher in the box the indicated amount will be returned. In the example presented by the minister, the amount was $3, but as the minister clarified to El Observador, it is “a sample.”
Asked about when the machines will be operational in large stores, Peña pointed out that it will be approximately in a year.
more recovery
The project is part of the objective of meeting the goals established by ministerial resolution 271 of the year 2021, which includes recover by 2025 50% of the recyclable packaging that circulates in the market and “at least 35% for each material”, estimated the director of Sustainability of the Chamber of Industries of Uruguay (CIU), Julio Sosa. In turn, by the year 2032, It is expected to achieve a recovery of 85% of the materials.
The recovery rates of the current packaging management plan are less than 5%.
“Our responsibility and commitment is in recover as much packaging as possibleThat is why we proposed this plan that seeks to increase the recovery efficiency of these containers. One of the elements that made it difficult to meet the objectives was that there was no incentive for the population”, acknowledged Sosa and pointed out that the initiative works with clean circuits, which means that they cannot extract the packages from the mixed waste. “There must be a predisposition of the user,” he estimated.
In the world, these deposit and reimbursement systems are normally more than 90% efficient, or even between 95% and 98%. “It drastically changes waste management,” Sosa asserted.
