Jacket made of beer bottles - Green Group continues to invest in recycling in Serbia

Sitting and sleeping on PET plastic bottles is not a new trend aimed at improving the physical and mental condition of the organism, but a daily habit of millions of people world wide. Namely, it is a less-known fact that automobile seats, three-seaters, armchairs, pillows, winter jackets and carpets are filled with polyester fibers, which are a product of the processing of bottles of mineral water, juices and other beverages. The Taiwanese and Japanese learned of numerous advantages of the PET packaging recycling few decades ago and these countries are now global leaders in the green industry. They have decided to implement their long-time experience in Southeast Europe so that Green Group, an international company with the headquarters in Romania, was set up in 2002.

The recycling network today operates in several European countries, while Greentech Serbia was set up in 2005 in Novi Sad, GreenTech CEO Mihail Mateski says in a statement for eKapija.

- The group has used the excellent synergy of experiences from the Near East and expanded the network to Europe. Its shareholders are the Taiwanese, Japanese, Swiss, etc. The Romanian company Green Fiber is the mother company and it is engaged in processing PET to the level of polyester fibers, that is, it makes the final product. Greentech daughter companies operate in Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Ukraine, Greece, and they purchase PET packaging and process it to the level of PET flakes (ground bottles). Greentech delivers semi-finished products to Green Fiber, whereas the final product is exported from Romania to the EU market, primarily to Germany, which imports about 80 percent of the production. The capacity of the plant in the village of Mladenovo near Backa Palanka amounts to 600 tonnes a month, while only 50 percent are employed at the moment. The company has processed 220 million tonnes of packaging since it was set up in Serbia in 2005 - says Mateski.

Mateski explains that the recycled PET packaging can be used in the automotive, furniture, construction, lumber, chemical, metal industry, etc. However, the most significant aspect of the processing is ecology because it is well known that it takes about 1,000 years for a plastic bottle to degrade in the nature. On the other hand, according to some data, 55,000 tonnes of this packaging are produced in Serbia every year.

(Mihail Mateski)

- Greentech operates on the whole territory of Serbia through a network of its suppliers, about 80 of them. We mainly cooperate with public utility companies and private companies engaged in PET collecting. Recycling in Serbia is at its beginning, but we hope for a significant progress due to the new Law on Packaging Waste Management. That law has created conditions for a serious approach to the development of infrastructure for the primary selection because public utility companies will soon have to enable citizens to separate PET at the place of its origin. Also, it stipulates certain national goals related to waste recycling. The goal for the last year was set at 5 percent, meaning that only that percentage of the total packaging waste in Serbia was recycled. That is a very small percentage, especially when we know that the EU regulations prescribe 50 percent, while some countries have set that limit to 80 percent. The level of PET collecting is low and variable. There are public utility companies that skip the selection process, while some have not doing the selection until recently. We have managed to create a network of reliable partners thanks to the feed-in tariff policy, but we still employ only 50 percent of our capacities.

Polluter pays

According to the words of Mateski, the new law has also introduced the policy "Polluter Pays" so that the companies that bottle juices and send PET packaging to the market will be paying ecological taxes to the operators in charge of packaging waste management and that money will be invested in the waste management system. The funds will be spent on the procurement of adequate containers, opening of recycling centers, expansion of the PET collecting network.

- The western countries have developed various systems for motivating citizens - from reduced trash collecting bills to repressive measures, that is, fines. Of course, it is necessary to make it possible for citizens to dispose of selected waste at a place in the vicinity of their home. The system is quite simple - collectors collect PET bottles and bale them in order to make the transport to the plant easier. Once the baled PET bottles reach the plant, they are debaled, sorted by colors, ground and washed. The result of this procedure is a new raw material - PET flakes, which is further processed to get polyester fibers.

Our interlocutor explains that there is a significant difference in the quality and price of raw materials, that is, PET bottles.

Greentech Ltd. Novi Sad is the leader in PET recycling in Serbia. The company has 40 employees and, ever since it was opened, it has been continuously working on the development of production technology and the expansion of a network of suppliers to cover the whole territory of Serbia.

Minister of Environment, Mining and Spatial Planning Oliver Dulic said that 7,000 people had got jobs in the recycling industry of Serbia in the previous two years, ever since recycling laws had been promulgated.

- I expect 10,000 people to be employed in that industry by the end of the mandate of this government - said Dulic.

Green Group invests EUR 5 million in construction of electric and electronic waste recycling plant in Vojvodina

On the occasion of a meeting with Vojvodina Prime Minister Bojan Pajtic in March 2011, the delegation of Green Group expressed readiness to invest about EUR 5 million in the construction of a new electric and electronic waste recycling plant in Vojvodina.

Besides, it is also interested in investing in the improvement of capacities of their plastic recycling plant Greentech in Mladenovo near Backa Palanka, which has recycled over 220 million PET bottles since it was formed in 2005.

Green Group is interested in investing in the construction of a new plant that will recycle electric and electronic waste in accordance with the state-of-the-art technology and employ between 100 and 150 people.

T.S.