April 10, 2024 – 1:05 pm
Beverage containers carrying redemption fees are only sporadically found on store shelves, and vending machines installed at the beginning of the year are nearly empty, according to the latest Greenpeace survey. According to them, the situation is devastating.
According to the organization, almost all manufacturers are taking advantage of the six-month grace period they received from the government to introduce the new type of returnable bottles, but the vast majority of supermarket chains are also delaying the introduction of their own branded mineral water and soft drinks in packaging with fees. Deposits. According to them, 400 million PET bottles alone would have been consumed during the lost quarter, two-thirds of which likely would not have been recycled.
The organization conducted a two-week survey between March 16 and 30, during which Greenpeace volunteers and activists visited 16 stores arbitrarily selected from the nine largest grocery chains in Hungary. In these tests, they examined whether there were actually single-use glass bottles and PET bottles bearing the new label, sold with a redemption fee of 50 HUF, or aluminum cans. Of the 16 stores, surveyors found drink containers bearing such markings in only 3 stores, two Aldi stores and one Spar store.
According to Simon Gergely, a chemist at Greenpeace Hungary, even large companies that have been bombarding customers with green messages for years are not trying to produce their own branded drinks in such bottles.
During the survey, Greenpeace also checked whether there were multi-use, refillable glass and PET bottles in stores. Investigators did not find a bottle bearing this logo anywhere.
In February, we were able to meet MOHU vending machines in 1,600 places, and only then there was nothing to replace.
