Alin Vișan, president of the Romanian Association for Packaging and Environment (ARAM), stressed that all actors involved in the production, collection and sorting of waste are responsible for meeting recycling targets, citizens having an important role. The statements were made during the conference “Waste Management – Harmonization of environmental legislation regarding extended producer responsibility,” organized by Green Report.

Producers, through the Organizations implementing the extended producer responsibility obligations (O.I.R.E.P.), are now obliged to meet their recycling targets directly through local authorities and to pay the costs of collection and sorting of packaging waste managed within their area.

Thus, the extended liability of the producer means that it has assumed the coverage of all costs necessary to manage packaging waste from the time it is placed in the market until it is collected and recycled to resume its packaging function, Vişan explained.

“We are not talking about any cost, but about costs that cover an efficient management of this system. These are costs that are transparent and predictable. It is not an unlimited responsibility of the producers, but an extended one, to cover this whole circuit. This means that clear roles and responsibilities are needed for all participants in the system, not just producers. We have these Responsible Transfer Organizations, which work, we have traders, waste collection and treatment operators – public, private – we have municipalities and citizens. The key to the system is for the citizen to throw away that packaging waste where it should. Not in the garbage, not in the pit,” he said during the conference.

The President of ARAM stressed the need to strengthen the control, both for collectors and recyclers, by state institutions and recalled that from 2020 there is a penalty, which in previous years applied only to producers, intended also to collectors, sanitizers or recyclers who do not comply.