Quality-Gated Circularity Assessment of PET, Aluminium, and Reusable Glass Packaging in Deposit Return Systems

Deposit return systems (DRS) can increase the capture of beverage packaging, but material circularity is not determined by return rate alone. A returned container contributes to high-value circularity only if it passes recognition, sorting, pre-processing, and material-specific quality gates. This article evaluates the material-quality performance of three returned beverage-packaging materials—polyethylene terephthalate (PET), aluminium and reusable glass—using a quality-gated high-value recovery framework. The model defines a high-quality recovery index, HQR = R × Q × Y, where R is the return rate, Q is the quality factor of the returned stream, and Y is the reprocessing or reuse yield. The HQR indicator describes the quality of the entire DRS process. The core purpose of the HQR model is to distinguish nominal packaging return from high-quality material recovery and to show whether returned PET, aluminium and reusable glass streams remain suitable for high-value circular pathways. A survey-supported early-stage return scenario (R = 0.50) is compared with the 77% and 90% separate-collection targets used in European policy. To strengthen the PET branch of the model, a pilot PET stream-quality and processing-yield dataset was incorporated, including PET purity, colour composition, non-PET impurities, residual moisture, organic residues, intrinsic viscosity, washed PET flake or pellet yield, and sorting/washing rejection. The pilot data indicate that Lithuania had higher PET quality (98.2% PET purity, 80% clear PET, 1.8% non-PET impurities, IV = 0.74 dL/g, and 84.5% washed PET yield) than the Polish regional average (94.3% PET purity, 72.7% clear PET, 5.7% non-PET impurities, IV = 0.721 dL/g, and 80.3% washed PET yield). At R = 0.50, the pilot-derived PET HQR is approximately 37.8% for Lithuania and 31.6% for the Polish regional average. The results indicate that the same nominal return rate can lead to substantially different high-quality recovery outcomes because PET is constrained by stream purity, colour, contamination, and processing yield; aluminium by alloy and remelting control; and reusable glass by inspection, breakage, and refill compatibility. The proposed framework can support structured DRS operator reporting by identifying the material-quality and yield variables that should be measured alongside mass collection; however, operator-level validation is required before the model can be used as a predictive performance tool.