German waste management service provider Reclay Group (Herborn; www.reclay-group.com) plans to strengthen its activities in Slovakia. In the future, sister company RecycleMe (Herborn; www.recycleme.eco) will be operating from Bratislava – after completing previous commitments in Germany and Austria. Customers will be offered consulting services in the fields of the circular economy, recyclability of packaging, and extended producer responsibility (EPR). Cooperation partners include plant manufacturer Stadler and TÜV Süd.

Slovakia introduced a deposit system for beverage cans and PET bottles on 1 January 2022 (see Plasteurope.com of 11.01.2022). According to the figures, it is the first system of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe. Consumers pay a deposit of EUR 0.15 on items marked with a “Z”. The Slovakian government plans, by 2025, to recycle 90% of the beverage packs that are subject to a deposit.

Ján Makovník, managing director of RecycleMe in Slovakia, explains that the introduction of the mandatory deposit for single-use beverage packs in his country would – as in Austria and other European countries – have an effect on the availability of “valuable raw materials”, which, in turn, is of importance for the recyclability of packaging and the use of recyclate.

Reclay recently announced a strategic recycling partnership with Borealis (see Plasteurope.com of 19.01.2022). In Germany, according to provisional figures from the Central Agency Packaging Register (ZSVR, Osnabrück; www.verpackungsregister.org), Reclay, as a dual waste management system, currently holds a market share in the field of lightweight packaging of 12.75% – compared to 13.6% in Q4 2021.