Recycling materials will no longer be just a good environmental action but will become a financially profitable act for ordinary citizens. The new deposit system promises that empty packaging will no longer be trash and will be worth money in a matter of days.
The answer to this true environmental revolution marks a return to the traditional concept of the old recoverable tare introduced in the sixties. The newspaper says that the national system comes into operation on April 10th and will exclusively cover single-use plastic containers and aluminum cans.
Drinks included in this new model will suffer an automatic increase of ten cents in their final price charged at supermarket checkouts. The same source indicates that this extra value will act as a deposit that the consumer will only be able to recover at the exact moment of return.
Deliveries must be made to specific automatic machines that will be spread across large commercial areas across the country. The container must be inserted into the equipment completely empty and keep its original barcode intact so that optical reading can validate the transaction.
Ways to get your money back
Electronic collection equipment will not distribute any type of physical money during the delivery of recyclable material to the consumer. The aforementioned source explains that the machines will issue a receipt corresponding to the number of units returned with the exact calculation of the accumulated value.
The citizen then has complete freedom to discount this paper on purchases at the establishment itself or to demand direct exchange for cash at the payment counters. The system also allows the accumulation of these amounts on store loyalty cards or the simple donation of the amount collected to various social solidarity institutions.
Exceptions and excluded materials
The logistics process imposes strict rules regarding the state of conservation of the product that make it impossible to accept dented or intentionally flattened packaging. Glass bottles and large-capacity plastic bottles are completely outside the guidelines approved by this environmental network.
Containers that have contained any type of beverage with more than twenty-five percent of dairy origin in their composition will also be rejected. The presence of organic residues associated with milk derivatives severely impairs the purity required at the end of the industrial processing cycle.
The destination of the material and the impact on the country
Collection from these units goes directly to two large sorting centers designed to process and transform these polymers into high-quality secondary raw materials. Expresso further explains that this new compound will be reintroduced onto the market for the quick and safe production of new bottles intended for food use.
Government forecasts point to the processing of more than two billion packages in the first calendar year of the model’s operation. The implementation of this system in Portuguese territory represents the first major test for the adoption of this environmental technology in southern Europe.
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