URUGUAY HOPES TO RECOVER 50 PERCENT OF ALL ITS PACKAGING BY 2025

At the first meeting of the commission for negotiations on plastic pollution being held in Punta del Este, the Minister of the Environment, Adrián Peña, announced that he had put in place a system to encourage the return of packaging: an incentive to be offered to citizens to increase the return of packaging, with the goal of recovering up to 50% of these containers by the year 2025.

The Chamber of Industry of Uruguay presented its new Container Management Plan, which will provide an incentive for citizens to return containers, enabling their recovery for subsequent reuse. Despite the government’s initiative, most of the waste is still in the name of the producer, since it is the producer who places it on the market. This is achieved together with Law No. 19,829 (Integral Waste Management), which means that anyone who creates waste is doing so for their own benefit and will therefore have to be responsible for compensating for any negative consequences.

In addition, ministerial resolution 271 of 2021 requires companies to recover 30% of containers by December 2023 and 50% by December 2025. The head of the Environment Department indicated that currently the recovery of packaging in the country totals around 4%. In addition, only 6 of the 19 departments have adhered to the Packaging Management Plan, so the ministry is working to provide different financial instruments to companies that can develop recovery operations and achieve the proposed goals.

Uruguay will be the first country in Latin America to implement a packaging reimbursement system. This implies that particular machines will be installed in every corner of the country, which implies the installation of machines throughout the country, in which cylindrical containers, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), aluminum cans, and tetrabrick format, among others, will be deposited.

With each return, a ticket will be issued with the value of the container for subsequent return to the consumer. The MA will control the implementation and execution of both the general plan and the system, and non-compliance with the goals proposed in the ministerial resolution may result in sanctions.