Every week, Dana Chitucescu grabs a bag, walks around her home in the Transylvanian village of Pianu de Jos. She’s collecting something her neighbors happily hand over: empty bottles and cans.

The 51-year-old brings them to her local shop, drops them off, and walks out with 40 brand-new Romanian leu in her pocket, about $9 USD. She uses it to feed her seven cats.

It’s a small thing, nothing, really. But it also, somehow, encapsulates the story of how an entire country is changing the way it thinks about trash.

From zero to hero: Romania used to be Europe’s worst recycler

Not long ago, Romania ranked dead last in the European Union for recycling. Three-quarters of the country’s waste—74%—went straight into landfills. The environmental impact was catastrophic: rivers became clogged with plastic. Picturesque roadsides were buried under litter.

The European Environment Agency even flagged Romania as being at serious risk of missing its recycling targets for years in a row. It looked like a problem without a solution.

Here’s how RetuRO works: when you buy a bottled or canned drink in Romania—water, soda, beer, anything—you pay an extra deposit of .50 Romanian leu. That’s about 11 cents in US dollars. When you finish the drink and bring the empty container back to the store, you get your money back. Voila!

That’s it. That’s the whole idea.

On top of that, Romania has made it ridiculously simple for citizens to recycle. Supermarkets have automated reverse vending machines that scan the container, crush it, and then credit your deposit on the spot. Smaller shops handle returns manually. And crucially, the program accepts plastic, aluminum, and glass; the latter, which most countries’ deposit systems skip altogether because glass is heavy and expensive to transport.

RetuRO launched in November 2023 as a partnership between the Romanian government, beverage producers, and retailers, meaning everyone had skin in the game. Everyone had a reason to want to make it work.

What happened next was remarkable

Within months, something shifted in Romania. The recycling numbers, of course—those went through the roof—but also, something deeper. The way people regarded bottles and cans changed. Containers stopped feeling like garbage and became, instead, money left on the table.

In the peak summer months, 94% of beverage containers were being returned. Later, in January 2026, the return rate hit 108%. That meant Romanians were returning more containers than were even sold that month, as people dug old bottles out of storage. Nine out of ten Romanians have used the system at least once. Six in ten do it every single week.

Since launch, over 9 billion containers have been returned.

“It is a zero-to-hero story,” said Gemma Webb, RetuRO’s CEO. “You go to Romania now, you don’t see a bottle anywhere. It was the impossible made possible. Everybody’s very proud… we are the largest fully integrated deposit return system globally.”

It’s not just about bottles. It’s about people

Yes, Romania’s story is impressive. But not because of the infrastructure or the statistics alone. It’s the way RetuRO has fundamentally changed Romanian citizens’ views on recycling.

Grandparents who never recycled in their lives have found a new weekly routine (and a small but real source of income). Parents use their trips to the return machine as a chance to teach their kids that taking care of the planet doesn’t have to be a sacrifice; it can just be Tuesday. Young Romanians in their 20s now describe recycling as part of their identity.

Dana Chitucescu’s brother lives in Spain, a country without a comparable system. Apparently, he’s jealous. “He says it’s one of the few things Romania does exceptionally well,” she told The Guardian. “He’s right.”

Not to mention, the program has also added over $346 million to Romani’s GDP and created more than 2,000 new jobs: all within its first year of full operation. Romanian recyclers no longer need to import plastic raw material, because for the first time, there’s enough good-quality recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (or PET, the clear, lightweight plastic used to make the vast majority of beverage bottles) being collected domestically to meet industry demand.

The rest of the world is paying attention

Government leaders from Poland, Turkey, Bulgaria, and beyond have traveled to Romania specifically to learn how to replicate this recycling scheme. In the European Parliament, Romania serves as the benchmark model for deposit-return programs.

The secret to Romania’s success isn’t complicated. They made the recycling incentive real and immediate, simplified participation by creating a universal system (every retailer who sells drinks must accept returns by law), and trusted its citizens to do the right thing.

What could this look like where you live?

Romania’s recycling journey is proof that a recycling revolution doesn’t require a perfect society, unlimited funding, or decades of gradual habit change. It requires the right system, one built around real human behavior, not wishful thinking.

Sometimes, all it takes is a bag, a short walk to the corner shop, and eleven cents.

Or, that’s how it starts, anyway. That’s how nine billion bottles get returned.

Music, community and joy drive real change

In a small village in Pwani, a district on Tanzania’s coast, a massive dance party is coming to a close. For the past two hours, locals have paraded through the village streets, singing and beating ngombe drums; now, in a large clearing, a woman named Sheilla motions for everyone to sit facing a large projector screen. A film premiere is about to begin. 

It’s an unusual way to kick off a film about gender bias, inequality, early marriage, and other barriers that prevent girls from accessing education in Tanzania. But in Pwani and beyond, local organizations supported by Malala Fund and funded by Pura are finding creative, culturally relevant ways like this one to capture people’s interest. 

The film ends and Sheilla, the Communications and Partnership Lead for Media for Development and Advocacy (MEDEA), stands in front of the crowd once again, asking the audience to reflect: What did you think about the film? How did it relate to your own experience? What can we learn? 

Sheilla explains that, once the community sees the film, “It brings out conversations within themselves, reflective conversations.” The resonance and immediate action create a ripple effect of change.

Across Tanzania, gender-based violence often forces adolescent girls out of the classroom. This and other barriers — including child marriage, poverty, conflict, and discrimination — prevent girls from completing their education around the world. 

Sheilla and her team are using film and radio programs to address the challenges girls face in their communities. MEDEA’s ultimate goal is to affirm education as a fundamental right for everyone, and to ensure that every member of a community understands how girls’ education contributes to a stronger whole and how to be an ally for their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, friends, nieces, and girlfriends. 

Sheilla’s story is one of many that inspired Heart on Fire, a new fragrance from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection that blends the warm, earthy spices of Tanzania with a playful, joyful twist. Here’s how Pura is using scent as a tool to connect the world and inspire action.

A partnership focused on local impact, on a global mission

Pura, a fragrance company that recognizes education as both freedom and a human right, has partnered with Malala Fund since 2022. In order to defend every girl’s right to access and complete 12 years of education, Malala Fund partners with local organizations in countries where the educational barriers are the greatest. They invest in locally-led solutions because they know that those who are closest to the problems are best equipped to solve and build durable solutions, like MEDEA, which works with communities to challenge discrimination against girls and change beliefs about their education. 

But local initiatives can thrive and scale more powerfully with global support, which is why Pura is using their own superpower, the power of scent, to connect people around the world with the women and girls in these local communities. 

The Pura x Malala Fund Collection incorporates ingredients naturally found in Tanzania, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Brazil: countries where Malala Fund operates to address systemic education barriers. Eight percent of net revenue from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection will be donated to Malala Fund directly, but beyond financial support, the Collection is also a love letter to each unique community, blending notes like lemon, jasmine, cedarwood, and clove to transport people, ignite their senses, and help them draw inspiration and hope from the global movement for girls’ education. Through scent, people can connect to the courage, joy, and tenacity of girls and local leaders, all while uniting in a shared commitment to education: the belief that supporting girls’ rights in one community benefits all of us, everywhere. 

You’ve already met Sheilla. Now see how Naiara and Mama Habiba are building unique solutions to ensure every girl can learn freely and dare to dream.

Naiara Leite is reimagining what’s possible in Brazil

In Brazil, where pear trees and coconut plantations cover the Northeastern Coast, girls like ten-year-old Julia experience a different kind of educational barrier than girls in Tanzania. Too often, racial discrimination contributes to high dropout rates among Black, quilombola and Indigenous girls in the country. 

“In the logic of Brazilian society, Black people don’t need to study,” says Naiara Leite, Executive Coordinator of Odara, a women-led organization and Malala Fund partner. Bahia, the state where Odara is based, was once one of the largest slave-receiving territories in the Americas, and because of that history, deeply-ingrained, anti-Black prejudice is still widespread. “Our role and the image constructed around us is one of manual labor,” Naiara says. 

But education can change that. In 2020, with assistance from a Malala Fund grant, Odara launched its first initiative for improving school completion rates among Black, quilombola, and Indigenous girls: “Ayomidê Odara”. The young girls mentored under the program, including Julia, are known as the Ayomidês. And like the Pura x Malala Fund Collection’s Brazil: Breath of Courage scent, the Ayomidês are fierce, determined, and bursting with energy.

Ayomidês take part in weekly educational sessions where they explore subjects like education and ethnic-racial relations. The girls are encouraged to find their own voices by producing Instagram lives, social media videos, and by participating in public panels. Already, the Ayomidês are rewriting the narrative on what’s possible for Afro-Brazilian girls to achieve. One of the earliest Ayomidês, a young woman named Debora, is now a communications intern. Another former Ayomidê, Francine, works at UNICEF, helping train the next generation of adolescent leaders. And Julia has already set her sights on becoming a math teacher or a model. 

“These are generations of Black women who did not have access to a school,” Naiara says. “These are generations of Black women robbed daily of their dreams. And we’re telling them that they could be the generation in their family to write a new story.” 

Mama Habiba is reframing the conversation in Nigeria 

In Mama Habiba’s home country of Nigeria, the scents of starfruit, ylang ylang and pineapple, all incorporated into the Pura x Malala Collection’s “Nigeria: Hope for Tomorrow,” can be found........

© Upworthy