Austria's disposable deposit: record returns and high acceptance!

Austria's disposable deposit: record returns and high acceptance!

Brunn am Gebirge, Österreich - Austria has been introducing a disposable deposit system since the beginning of 2025, which already shows impressive results. According to 5min , millions of bottles and cans found their way out of the garbage cans into the recycling circuit. Providers of withdrawal systems such as Tomra evaluate the functioning of the system positively and in particular emphasize the advantages: the reduction of littering, the increase in recycling rates and the recovery of valuable raw materials such as aluminum and pet.

On July 12, 2025, over 8.3 million disposable packaging were returned to Tomra pawns. A particularly outstanding event was the withdrawal of almost 23,000 containers on a single machine in one day. The popularity of the multi-feed bulk collection machines, which can take up to 100 containers at once, contribute to the efficiency of the system. The return of the withdrawal has grown by an impressive 82 percent between May and June 2025, which gathered almost twice the amount of one-way empties compared to the previous month.

excellent system availability

The availability of the return devices was over 95 percent on average during business hours, which speaks for a high reliability of the system. This is confirmed by OTS , which classifies the quality of the collection as crucial for a variety of recycling.

in international comparison, Austria does well. Germany has a return rate of around 98 percent since 2003, and Norway with around 92.3 percent and Lithuania with a quota of 91.9 percent at the end of 2017 show that such systems can work effectively. The approval of the respective systems in these countries has been above average in recent years.

a long -term goal: resource reduction

Tomra, founded in 1972, offers empties withdrawal systems worldwide and aims to reduce the dependence on raw materials and to avoid packaging waste in the environment. Every year, over 48 billion empty beverage packaging is fed to recycling. With your technology you strive to increase resource productivity and thus have a positive impact on the environment.

The beginnings of the disposable deposit system in Austria already show that the environmentally friendly initiative not only learns support from the users, but also achieves substantial progress in waste management. In view of the high acceptance and the already remarkable success, Austria could serve as a model for other countries in the near future.