99.6% of public bins survived intact: great results from the National Bin Count Day

For the second year in a row, the Plastic Avengers* brought people together last Sunday, 26 October, to inspect public bins; volunteers were encouraged to take and upload photos of bins. The goal is to map out if and where in the Netherlands bins have been broken into and if there is litter lying around.

Hundreds of volunteers participated in the action, which yielded a total of 12,315 photos taken in 114 municipalities. For no less than 99.6% (11,919) of the street bins, there was no litter nearby. 96.8% of the inspected bins turned out to be in perfect condition, and only 2.86% had an open or damaged door.

This confirms – despite the persistent image that has been conjured up in recent years – that deposits do not cause extra litter. On the contrary: the bins and their surroundings are clean.

And besides: in the Netherlands, the share of cans and plastic bottles in litter has decreased by almost 80%. Moreover, the deposit system helps prevent bins from filling up too quickly – meaning they overflow less often.

During the first edition of the National Bin Counting Day last year, the problem of broken bins with litter around them turned out to be mainly in the major cities. Even then, a nationwide problem was shown not to exist. This year, open bins and bins with waste around them turned out to be mainly in North Holland, presumably Amsterdam.

Take-back obligation

No matter how small the number is in practice, there are Dutch people who are annoyed by broken and dirty bins. Mice and rats love discarded waste, especially food leftovers. If we want to do something about this, we should not look angrily at deposit scavengers – people who search for empty bottles and cans and return the packaging for the deposit. Due to the introduction of the deposit system, packaging is simply worth money. What we must do instead is establish more return points in the Netherlands. Because on behalf of the packaging industry, Verpact has established far too few well-functioning return points. Therefore, a legal take-back obligation must be introduced quickly: where you buy drinks, you must also be able to return empty packaging.

Distribution of street bins (Source: Zwerfinator)

* Plastic Avengers is an initiative by Merijn Tinga (Plastic Soup Surfer) and Dirk Groot (Zwerfinator); thanks to them for taking the initiative for this second National Bin Counting Day and for allowing the use of their data.