In 2023, Spain collected only 41.3% of those placed on the market for recycling, according to . This data is of great importance for several reasons. The first is that it officially certifies that the country fails to meet the 70% collection objective for this type of packaging that was set for that year, which in turn reveals the current management model for this type of waste. and the figures that have been given so far. But, in addition, it automatically has a fundamental consequence. As the Ministry itself recognizes in the conclusion of this report, “consequently, a deposit, refund and return (SDDR) system must be implemented throughout the national territory and within a period of two years.”
This SDDR system, which has already been operating in many European countries for years, is based on the consumer leaving a few cents in deposit when they buy, for example, a bottle of soft drink and recovering that money when they return the empty container to the store, such as It happened in the past. And the obligation to implement it now comes from Law 7/2022 on Waste and Contaminated Soils for a Circular Economy, which established that if Spain does not reach the European goal of collecting 70% of plastic beverage bottles for recycling in 2023 should implement the SDDR system.
Today, single-use plastic bottles, like other packaging, are managed in Spain through the yellow container, which is in charge of Ecoembes. According to data from this company, in 2023, 73.4% of plastic beverage bottles were selectively recovered, a percentage very different from that now estimated by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition. After learning of the new report and the obligation to implement an alternative SDDR system, Ecoembes has defended its numbers and has assured that “the resulting rates do not coincide because the public body barely incorporates in its calculation the quantities collected in high-traffic areas ( also called “outside the home”) and which represent more than 40% of the total bottles selectively collected in 2022 and 2023. For 25 years Ecoembes has always taken selective collection into account of packaging in these private spaces to compute and report the operational data of their activity to public authorities, always counting on its validation and serving for subsequent reporting to higher authorities (Eurostat).”
For its part, the Ecological Transition report specifies that the calculations have been carried out in accordance with the methodology established in Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/1752, considering that last year 214,039 plastic beverage bottles were placed on the market. and 74,482 tons were collected for recycling by local entities with the yellow container and another 14,017 tons through separate collection that is not the container. yellow (those corresponding to “outside the home”), which results in 41.3%.
“We interpret this technical discrepancy as evidence of an urgent need: to clarify and consolidate officially and definitively by the competent public authorities a measurement methodology that allows us to know once and for all, with informative transparency and technical rigor, the only possible way to calculate the bottle collection rate from now on,” says the company responsible for the yellow container, “something that has not happened on this occasion despite the numerous complaints filed by Ecoembes in recent months and that “They have finally ended up leading to this technical discrepancy.”
For its part, the environmental organization Greenpeace has celebrated the data calculated by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition as a great triumph, as it agrees with environmentalists when they criticized the figures that were being given on current recycling rates. “We did it! “Today is a day of celebration for Greenpeace after a long and arduous battle,” the environmental organization stressed. “As we have repeatedly denounced, Ecoembes has been lying for years about the management they carry out, generating irreversible environmental damage. Being able to ‘return the helmet’ again is, without a doubt, good news for our battered environment,” commented the head of Greenpeace’s plastic campaign, Julio Barea.
According to environmentalists, the implementation of the SDDR system only applies to beverages, but they assure that “every day 51 million beverage containers (bottles, cans and cartons) are sold in Spain, of which they are only recovered, in order to be recycled, 20 million. The rest ends up polluting the environment, thrown into landfills, burned or directly into fields, rivers, beaches and seas. With a deposit, return and return (SDDR) system, more than 90% of this waste could be recovered, compared to less than 40% currently.”
