A container’s return journey begins with a decision by the person who has finished using it. For that decision to lead somewhere, people need an accessible place, a working system and someone to receive their containers. Our Döşemealtı centre was established to give practical meaning to this effort for the environment.

Opened by the Earth Foundation for Combating Climate Change on 15 September, the centre began operating as the district’s first and only Manual Return Point. It offers a local place to meet and return containers, helping turn environmental awareness into a practical everyday habit.

MİN is the Turkish abbreviation for Manual Return Point. Within the Deposit Management System, it is a staffed point where empty containers are handed in and their deposit is returned to the user. PET and glass bottles and aluminium cans bearing the DOA mark can be returned subject to the system’s acceptance requirements.

At the Döşemealtı centre, staff process containers using handheld terminals. The DOA application and the QR code on the staff member’s device connect users to the return process. The effort made to separate containers at home or at work therefore meets the deposit system. The centre provides a local service that connects receipt, transaction handling and the orderly accumulation of containers.

Local interest is reflected in the centre’s daily life. Residents arriving with containers from home, small businesses making regular visits and waste collectors coming to the centre each day all contribute to the work. Every repeat visit creates another opportunity for environmental responsibility to become a routine behaviour.

The Foundation sees people as more than those who hand in containers. Each contributes to the chain from separating materials to transporting them to the centre. Sustaining these relationships requires a clear process, a reliable service and mutual respect. The centre’s local value takes shape through these everyday encounters.

Hilal Özdemir, a member of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, coordinates the centre’s entire operation. Bringing her strong environmental commitment into daily practice, she has organised a demanding, physically intensive task into a clean, orderly and traceable working system.

Sacks arriving, containers being processed, materials being stored in an organised way and conversations with visitors… This operation depends on care renewed every day. Hilal Özdemir’s contribution shows how commitment to the environment can become the discipline that keeps a local service running.

Nurşen, one of the Foundation’s volunteers, chose to take part in environmental action rather than stay at home. She joins the work at the centre almost every day. By sharing her time and effort, she gives volunteering a tangible place in everyday life.

Women are among those responsible for the daily running of this initiative. Their contributions, from coordination to practical support, sustain the service. They remind us that keeping a return point open depends on people taking responsibility alongside the equipment and infrastructure.

A container’s arrival at the centre is often the result of work that goes unseen. Separating materials in the streets, carrying them and collecting them throughout the day requires time, physical effort and experience. Waste collectors who regularly bring containers to the centre are important contributors to this process.

The Earth Foundation works alongside waste collectors and also seeks to understand their work by experiencing it. Carrying a sack, separating containers and repeating these tasks throughout the day makes the labour behind environmental action tangible. For the Foundation, this closeness is part of understanding practical needs and building respectful relationships with those doing the work.

Founder and Chairwoman Serpil Arslantaş gives this project particular importance and strengthens the centre’s work through her support. For her, the centre is a place where the Foundation’s responsibility towards nature and people becomes part of daily life. She values recognition of the person carrying a container from the street to the centre alongside the return of the container itself.

The Chairwoman’s support therefore goes hand in hand with the effort to understand the work at close quarters. Seeking to understand the weight of a sack, the fatigue of repeating the same task and the determination needed to begin again each day deepens the Foundation’s connection to this project.

Revomat, the centre’s operator, supports the Foundation through its practical assistance and approach to resolving issues. The Foundation values this support in daily operations and having an accessible contact when needs arise on the ground.

The initiative brings the deposit system’s infrastructure, operator support and civil society’s local relationships into one service. Technology gains practical meaning through the care of those who use it and the participation of the surrounding community.

The Döşemealtı DOA Manual Return Point is one of the Earth Foundation’s practical applications of responsible resource use and local participation. Its focus is on making container returns more accessible while building consistent, respectful relationships among those involved.

A neighbour returning, a shopkeeper separating containers, a volunteer walking through the door again the next day… This is how environmental responsibility takes root. In Döşemealtı, the Earth Foundation works to strengthen this everyday effort so that responsibility towards nature becomes part of a shared way of life.