Together with AVAG Umwelt AG, which represents the interests of Bern's municipalities, we can look back on a very successful 2025.
The Bern project, which we launched in May 2023 with 50 Bernese collection municipalities, now boasts impressive key figures: 216 municipalities have already joined the collection programme by means of a concession. This corresponds to almost 65% of all municipalities in Bern.
Acceptance of our standardised, universal collection and recycling solution, which is supported by the Canton of Berne's Office for Water and Waste (AWA), has steadily increased among the population. Since the launch, we have put around 4.9 million chargeable collection bags into circulation. Last year alone, 1610 tonnes of household plastics were collected and recycled in the canton of Bern (2023: 430 tonnes; 2024: 1476 tonnes). This result is remarkable and clearly shows that even the collection of supposedly small amounts of plastic from households is worthwhile.
By recycling plastics in the canton of Bern, we were able to replace around 805,000 kg of new material in 2025, which corresponds to a saving of around 2,415,000 litres of crude oil. The regranulate obtained from the household plastics collected in Bern is sufficient, for example, to produce around 628,906 metres of cable conduit - an impressive amount. Plastic waste that cannot be recycled, such as mixed plastics, was fed into the cement industry as a substitute fuel, replacing 804,195 kg of environmentally harmful coal or lignite. In total, 4,556,300 kg of CO₂ emissions were saved compared to thermal recycling, which corresponds to a car journey of around 35,070,043 km in a mid-range car.
The new Packaging Ordinance, which is expected to come into force in mid-2026, will also change the framework conditions for the collection of plastic packaging and beverage cartons from households. This is why we, as the Bring Plastic Back collection system, have decided to become a member of RecyPac together with InnoRecycling AG. The aim is to further promote the strengthening of the cycle and the uniform collection of plastic packaging and beverage cartons within the industry organisation. With the RecyBag, RecyPac offers a seamless connection solution for our collection system.
We have already held initial talks with AVAG Umwelt AG and RecyPac in order to optimise the transformation. We are currently working intensively on viable solutions to ensure that the project can continue successfully under the new framework conditions.