Reciclar a Valer + is a pioneering project that promotes sustainable behaviours. Within a year, a deposit system that rewards the consumer has allowed more than 13 tons of PET plastic to be collected.
Novo Verde, the packaging waste compliance scheme, celebrates the one-year anniversary of the Reciclar a Valer + pilot project, a pioneering awareness campaign consisting of a reverse vending machine that delivers discount coupons in exchange for PET beverage bottles.
Thanks to this initiative, set up in Pingo Doce da Malveira, more than 500 thousand PET beverage bottles were collected in one year, equivalent to more than 13 thousand kilograms of this type of packaging waste. Consumers who participated in the pilot project and returned their PET bottles have received a total of about 20.000 euros worth of discount coupons
Ricardo Neto, president of Novo Verde, stresses that “this project is a way to improve collection rates for PET packaging waste, but also an experiment to verify the behaviour of the population in this context. These figures suggest that combining awareness actions with an incentive system for consumers can be a formula for success in terms of commitment to target and, above all, to the environment.”
This initiative is part of the European Union’s package of measures and overall waste management targets, as well as the European Strategy for Plastics, which requires all packaging made of this material placed on the market in the European Union to be reusable or easily recyclable by 2030. Plastic beverage bottles, as single-use plastic products, should be subject to reimbursement systems or other measures that have a direct positive impact on the collection rate and, consequently, on the quality of the material collected and recycled.