Campaigners return plastic waste pile to water producer Spa

“You forgot your plastic waste yesterday at the Brussels 20 km”, say the NGOs together with a marathon runner to the CEO of Spadel.

Watch the report about the action on Bruzz

This action is part of the Back to Sender campaign by environmental organisation Recycling Netwerk Benelux. With this campaign, the environmental organisation, together with many citizens, asks beverage producers to give up their lobbying opposition to deposits.

“The producer of Spa builds its entire image around environmental friendliness, but on Sunday during the Brussels 20 km it again distributed hundreds of thousands of bottles intended to be thrown away after just a few minutes. That is hypocritical,” say the organisations.

Between 300,000 and 350,000 single-use plastic bottles were distributed on Sunday. With this number, one could map out a route of plastic bottles of between 49 and 58 kilometres. That is almost three times the distance of the marathon, or from Brussels to Ghent.

If they end up in a public bin, these plastic bottles go to the incinerator, just as happens throughout the year. If they end up on the roadside, clearing up that rubbish is at the expense of the municipal cleaning services and therefore the taxpayers. When they are not cleared up, they eventually end up in the plastic soup via our waterways.

Spadel CEO Marc du Bois made disparaging remarks about deposits at the end of March. “We do not think it is normal for a company, which builds its image around clean spring water and clean nature, to oppose so strongly a measure that can keep their plastic packaging out of nature,” say Recycling Netwerk and Conscious Crew. “We therefore ask Spa to speak out positively in favour of deposits”.

The company, on the other hand, does claim that all bottles distributed are made of 100% recycled material. That is good, of course. But it is ironic that the company has to source the raw material for those bottles from countries with a deposit return scheme. Due to food safety, 95% of the recycled PET used must come from food applications. This simply cannot be guaranteed through collection with the Belgian blue bag.

Spadel has an annual plastic footprint of 4,141 tonnes of plastic packaging in the Netherlands alone. Of this, 2,634 tonnes is virgin plastic, according to Spadel’s response to a Greenpeace survey.

The participants in the Back to Sender campaign pick up PET bottles and cans from litter and send them back to beverage producers, asking them to support the introduction of deposit return systems.