When a company puts a bottle or can on the market, it must charge a deposit and then pay for its processing and recycling. But the deposit is often not returned to the consumer. In the period from 2022 to the end of 2024, this is expected to amount to 340 million euros in uncollected deposits, according to research by Tuesday. The Financial Times.
The government requires soft drink makers to collect at least 90 percent of the bottles and cans they sell through deposit machines. But companies have been installing too few machines for years. The percentage remained at 68 percent in 2022. So much of the deposit will not be returned to consumers. According to the business newspaper, this will amount to 200 million euros from 2022, and that amount is expected to rise to 340 million euros this year.
As part of the motto 'the polluter pays', companies are responsible for setting up deposit machines, collecting cans and paying for their recycling. In practice, this responsibility is carried out by the Verpact foundation (until March 1 under the name the Packaging Waste Fund).
There has been a lot of criticism of Verpact for some time now. The Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) repeatedly concluded that Verpact does not comply with the law when it comes to deposits. According to the producers themselves, it will take until the end of 2026 before they can comply with the law by achieving the aforementioned 90 percent.
penalty
The ILT called this “not acceptable” in December and imposes a penalty if companies do not double the number of collection points to 9,500 before January 1, 2026.
In supermarkets, the collection of bottles and cans is usually reasonably organized. But people also buy soft drinks in shops at stations, at secondary schools, or at events where it is difficult for them to hand in their bottle or can. People also do not get money back at many of the return bins, while that is precisely the intention of the deposit system.
Verpact is a foundation, so the money left over from uncollected deposits by consumers may not be returned to companies such as Coca-Cola. The FD did discover that soft drink manufacturers recently had to pay less from Verpact for the processing and recycling of bottles and cans than before. This is politically sensitive, because deposits should not flow back to the business community (even in a detour). According to Verpact, all uncollected money will be invested in a better collection system.
Verpact says he does not recognize himself in the FD's reporting, because the foundation would also spend hundreds of millions on (expanding the) deposit system. It writes that it will soon come up with its own figures that should provide more clarity.
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