The Spanish Ministry of Environment on Friday published a report on the separate collection of single-use plastic beverage bottles under 3 litres in 2023.
The report says that 214,039 tonnes of single-use plastic bottles (PET and HDPE) were placed on the Spanish market in 2023. Of those, local entities collected 74,482 tonnes and private entities collected 14,017 tonnes. Thus, the separate collection rate stood at 41,3% in 2023.
The European Union’s Single Plastics Directive legislation imposes a 77% separate collection rate target by 2025, and of 90% by 2029. Spain has transposed those targets into national law, and additionally implemented interim targets of 70% by 2023 and 85% by 2027. Its legislation requires that a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) be set up if the 2023 interim target is not met.
The Ministry concluded that, since the interim 70% separate collection target was not met, a DRS for plastic bottles must be implemented across the entire Spanish territory within two years.
Details on what that DRS will look like are not yet available, but Spain is expected to follow the example of over 50 countries which have already implemented deposit return schemes, including European peers like Germany, Finland, and Lithuania, where collection rates are over 90%.
Spain had been under pressure to introduce a DRS by environmental groups like Zero Waste Europe and Greenpeace. This May, a report by research firm Eunomia commissioned by Zero Waste Europe and the Spanish Zero Waste Alliance suggested that Spain manipulated bottle collection data in 2021.
Eunomia argued that 2021 figures released by Spain’s packaging producer responsibility organisation (PRO), Ecoembes, are largely inflated. Ecoembes claims a 71% separate collection rate for small plastic bottles in 2021, but Eunomia’s calculations put the rate at only 36%, well below the 70% target mandated by Spanish law for 2023.
At the time, environmental groups called on the Spanish government to introduce a DRS to address the poor collection rates.
Greenpeace described the Spanish government’s decision to implement a DRS as an ‘historical victory’.
“We did it! Today is a day of celebration for Greenpeace after a long and arduous battle. As we have repeatedly denounced, Ecoembes has been lying for years about their management, causing irreversible environmental damage. To be able to ‘turn the tide’ again is, without a doubt, good news for our battered environment,” said the head of the Greenpeace plastic campaign, Julio Barea.