A “six-pack” of drinks in plastic or tin containers will cost 90 cents more as of 1st January in Slovakia. The year 2022 will begin a new era in which tins and plastic bottles will be charged a deposit in this country. Sellers can thus raise the price of mineral water by 15 cents per bottle.
The deposit will be on every disposable drink container up to 3 liters in volume and consisting of at least 80% water. The exceptions are plastic and tinned bottles of oil, milk, and drinks with more than 15% of alcohol. Bottles to be charged a deposit will be marked with a letter “Z” placed right next to the bar code.
Customers who want their money back will have to return the “Z” container undamaged to the shop. The Environment Ministry argues that it is necessary to have a non-squashed tin or bottle returned so as to be able to identify its country of origin. Otherwise, the Ministry claims, we could easily end up with neighbouring countries transporting their plastic waste here. The Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine and Hungary have not adopted a similar measure.
In some places, there have already been automats installed anticipating the new legislation. As the daily Dennik E reported, it is possible to use the automats also for drinks without a deposit. According to the daily, the most criticized part of the new law is the fact that the bottles must be returned in perfect shape, showing no signs of squashing, in order to be accepted by the machine. This applies mainly to big chain stores, where the quality of the container will be checked by the software in the machine. In small village shops, it will be on the store salesperson to judge the extent of damage. In order to teach people to bring undamaged bottles and tins to the store, the big chains have started to produce special bags with compartments, one per container. They will be provided to customers for free.
Tins and bottles can be returned to any shop. The only condition is that they have to have been sold in Slovakia.
The trial period of selling deposit containers alongside those without a deposit will be 6 months, after which it will be mandatory to sell only containers with a deposit.
Source: Dennik E, RSI
