On Thursday 30 May, in Madrid we were delighted to launch our report analysing the realities of the separate collection of single use plastic bottles in Spain. The report was a seven-month collaboration between ourselves, Zero Waste Europe and Spanish experts with a detailed knowledge of waste management in Spain.

The outcome was a significant finding that challenges the current misconception that Spain is on track to achieve collection rates in line with its own legal requirements, as well as those for the EU under the Single Use Plastics Directive. The figure of 71% collection of SUPD bottles had been put forward by the PRO Ecoembes, yet our work concluded that this rate is actually 36%.
 
In the light of this work, we are in a position to estimate that Spain is very unlikely to have met its own mandatory separate collection target (70%) for SUPD Bottles in 2023. A DRS is the only change to collection systems that would enable Spain to move rapidly from a collection rate of 36% in 2021, to the target of 77% set for 2025.

Media interest in the news story was huge. Our research was covered in a plethora of national media outlets and global news websites.

The full report can be found here.