Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, Murat Kurum, announced on Monday that Türkiye will complete its "Deposit Management System," designed to recycle disposable beverage packages, this year and make it mandatory from 2024 onward.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), the minister stated that the initiated program is set in terms of recycling wastes, and has been turned into a major environmental project.
An underlying "roof project" including pricing of plastic bags and a deposit refund system will ''convey a culture that prioritizes environment and nature,'' said the minister.
Noting that the Deposit Management System will be implemented gradually, the minister added that as of this year, there will be ''at least 7,000 locations with 2,000 deposit or return machines, and 5,000 deposit collection sites’’ available across the country.
He said that the ministry has already started the tender processes for products with barcodes and that they hope to complete the mechanism within this year. ''We will make it mandatory by 2024,'' he added.
Kurum stated that with the start of the Zero Waste Project, the recycling rate has increased to 27% as of this year, and stressed that Türkiye is ''walking a determined path toward becoming a country that completely transforms its waste with deposit return machines.''
He said that by reusing raw materials in production, within the scope of the mentioned project, the country will have saved billions of liras, and will establish ''direct employment opportunities for 20,000 citizens,’’ which is important in this context.
Minister Kurum explained that the pilot program was already developed in Kızılcahamam, one of the municipalities in the capital Ankara, sharing that additional income opportunities are provided to both the municipality and the citizens, as the culture of saving and recyling becomes widespread.
''I hope it will become more widespread and we will implement the process that we started in Kızılcahamam in 922 districts of our 81 provinces. And I hope we will practice this on 780,000 square kilometers (301,158 square miles) of our homeland in order to have a better world for our future and our children," he noted.
Approximately 50 billion disposable beverage packages are put on the market annually in Türkiye. Via the Deposit Management System, which will start to operate gradually throughout the country this year, citizens will be able to take their waste to collection points for refunds; thus transforming this project from an environmental to a significant economic milestone as well.
A certain deposit amount will be determined through the system developed by the Turkish Environment Agency, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Environment, and Turkish citizens will be charged an amount that will be refunded after product usage. Citizens will be directed to a supermarket or other collection points determined by the system in order to avail refunds, and also return waste products in order to have deposit amounts back. Return fees will be available via shopping points, which will be accessible via cards or mobile phone applications that can come in handy for shopping later.
With the implementation of the Deposit Management System, which will be expanded to all provinces and districts by the end of 2023, some 20 billion bottles are planned for recycling initially, and 37,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions are set to be reduced, while 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours of energy and 3.6 million barrels of oil will likely be saved.
Kızılcahamam, which was selected as the pilot region for the Zero Waste Project, became the pilot district for the Deposit Management System as well. So far, 25,500 people in the district have been visited at their homes and explained how to recycle waste.