The Guarantee-Return System (SGR) „is going as it should”, so that in autumn the figure of two billion recycled packaging will be reached in Romania, the Environment minister Mircea Fechet said on Monday, in southern Craiova.
„The results are positive. If we look at the figures, and as was said earlier, we exceeded 1.3 billion at the end of July, we will soon reach the second billion, which means a lot for the environment, just as it means a lot for the business environment and jobs. The fact that today we are here, in Dolj (County, ed. n.), we are opening the second sorting and counting center, is proof of this. The equipment here alone cost over six million euros, 120 green jobs, as we call them, people from neighbouring localities, and we see nature cleaner every day. Whether we are talking about forests, or we are talking about the riverbeds, or we are talking about the roadsides in Romania, we all see that our country is cleaner from one day to the next and I think this could mean that the Guarantee-Return System is working as it should,” the minister said.
Fechet specified, however, that there are still things that need to be improved in terms of this system, especially at the collection points, „where there are often unjustifiably long queues at those collection machines, there are stores that today, eight months after the launch of the Guarantee-Return System, simply refuse, although the law obliges them, to take the packaging from the people. For this reason, I asked my colleagues from the ministry, from the National Environmental Guard, just as I discussed with my colleagues from the National Agency for Consumer Protection, to identify all those collection points that do not comply with the law because it is a joint effort. Not only citizens must participate, but also traders and producers. In the end, it is an entire ensemble that does not function without the participation of an actor from this entire ecosystem that we call so beautifully the hora (traditional folk dance, ed. n.) of recycling,” the minister added.
AGERPRES
