99.73 Percent of All Deposited Plastic Bottles Now Have Caps Attached

A remarkable 99.73 percent of all plastic bottles collected through Denmark's deposit system now have their caps still attached, marking a substantial improvement. This figure represents an increase of nearly 10 percent and means approximately 56 million more plastic caps were collected in 2025 compared to 2024.

The surge in attached caps is a direct result of new regulations implemented following the EU's single-use plastics directive, which came into effect on July 3, 2024. The directive mandates that plastic bottles and cartons eligible for deposit must be sold with their caps firmly affixed.

Currently, these collected plastic caps are not recycled into new caps but are instead repurposed for other plastic items of lower quality. However, Dansk Retursystem, the organization managing the deposit system, is advocating for EU approval to allow the use of recycled plastic caps in food-grade packaging. "We would naturally like to tell the same good story about the caps," stated Hanne Svenningsen, climate and environment manager at Dansk Retursystem, emphasizing the desire to enable producers to use the plastic from attached caps for new caps.

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We would naturally like to tell the same good story about the caps, and therefore we would like to see an EU approval of the recycled caps, so that the producers get the opportunity to use plastic from the attached caps for new caps.