Romania has almost doubled its aluminium can recycling rate in just a few years, reaching 75% of cans placed on the market in 2025, according to RetuRO data analysed by the Every Can Counts initiative. Before the nationwide Deposit-Return System (SGR) was introduced, the recycling rate hovered around 35%, well below many EU peers.
A key advantage of SGR is that drink cans are collected separately and remain far cleaner than in mixed-waste systems, meaning most, if not all, can be recycled back into new cans, enabling a genuinely closed-loop system.
Aluminium is particularly suited to this model: it can be recycled repeatedly without loss of quality, and recovered material can be fed back into production quickly while retaining its properties regardless of how many times it is processed.
Producing a can from recycled aluminium uses up to 95% less energy than making one from primary metal
At European level, the latest joint report from Metal Packaging Europe and European Aluminium shows aluminium beverage can recycling has climbed to a record 76.3% in 2023 across the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.
