#ESS2023 | Mircea Fechet, Minister of the Environment: The DRS is the most important policy related to waste management in Romania in the last 30 years

On the first day of the Environmental Sustainability Summit 2023, Mircea Fechet, the Minister of Environment, Forests and Water Management talked about the importance of the Deposit-Return System (DRS) in Romania. The DRS is a new legislative framework that aims to reduce waste collection and management in Romania by 90% until 2035. The DRS system is a simple yet effective way to encourage individuals to return beverage containers to shops, thereby reducing landfill waste and promoting resource conservation.

“If we talk about waste management and my soul project, the DRS system in Romania, I always want to participate to discussions, not only to deliver speeches about the importance of the DRS, but also to be sure that I’m in really close contact with all the parties involved. I believe that now before we started, and even after the DRS system started, the dialogue and the real-time feedback have been essential in order for the system to function.

This morning, I started my day by telling my colleagues that we have 57 days until the DRS system will start, and it is probably the biggest and most important policy related to waste management in Romania that we’ve had in the last 30 years. It’s no secret that Romania is not doing a great job at waste collection and at waste management. We have to lower those quantities by 90% until 2035, which is a lot of work and it’s also a commitment for a cleaner and healthier environment for future generations and, of course, for us. It’s a very simple system that encourages individuals to return to the shops the beverage containers. It will reduce landfill waste, and I’m sure that all of you are familiar with all the plastic we see in the forests, rivers, and lakes. My colleagues have tested the water quality of a mountain lake in Buzau County, and they found a lot of microplastic. If microplastic is already affecting the mountain lakes, you can imagine the pollution we have in the Danube Delta and the Black Sea.

The DRS system will reduce waste and participate to resource conservation. I really care about involving the citizens and that they will know that they will be the ones to make the system work, and we expect the DRS to have an efficiency of over 95%, three years into its implementation. it will not be easy, it’s an issue we’ve been talking about since 2018, a project I created from scratch and I’m really positive.

The DRS system will be implemented starting on the 30th of November and it will be efficient, even though there are a lot of skeptical people. I hope that we will not only have the second largest system in EU, after the German one, but we will be an example of good practice, and maybe, for the first time in so many years, Romania will be an example for other EU states when it comes to managing waste.”