Schoon Belonen is expensive and will not rid the Netherlands of litter

These conclusions are evident from the evaluation of the Schoon Belonen (Clean Reward) project, which was carried out by waste lawyer Rogier Hörchner. “So, with the Schoon Belonen method, you can never get the whole of the Netherlands clean,” notes Rob Buurman of Recycling Netwerk.

Schoon Belonen is a 2-year pilot scheme in which schools and clubs receive a financial reward for collecting small PET bottles and cans. This is intended to prevent and clean up litter. The project is a compromise between former State Secretary Mansveld of Infrastructure and the Environment and the business community, which is keen to prevent the introduction of a deposit on cans and bottles at all costs.

The Package Waste Fund (Afvalfonds Verpakkingen), the Nature and Environment Foundation (Stichting Natuur en Milieu) and the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) are supervising the implementation of the pilot, which takes place from 2015 to the end of 2017. According to State Secretary Mansveld, this pilot was to be the basis for a scalable, replicable and cost-efficient nationwide litter plan to be rolled out in 2018.

For his research, Hörchner submitted 160 Wob (Freedom of Information) requests to the more than 80 participating municipalities and Rijkswaterstaat. Despite the thousands of pages of response he received, few municipalities were able to provide answers to questions about the costs incurred and civil service hours, the number of participants and the size of the territory being managed within the municipality.

The pain points: small-scale, expensive and difficult to monitor

Hörchner's research reveals some key areas of pain of the Schoon Belonen pilot project.

It involves relatively small areas, mainly in the vicinity of the participating school or club. A whole host of environments struggling with litter are excluded *a priori* from the Schoon Belonen project: litter in nature, agricultural areas, countryside, station areas, business parks, main roads, rivers, canals, lakes and sea. In addition, many municipalities also indicated that the project progressed with difficulty due to busy schedules of schools, clubs and families. “This immediately indicates the limits of the project. The actions are small-scale. The municipalities state that it takes effort to keep up enthusiasm. The government should therefore not expect clubs and schools to clean up the whole of the Netherlands,” warns Rob Buurman. “This limitation of Schoon Belonen implies that the system can never be called a nationwide system. In terms of integrality, it will be increasingly less performant than a nationwide deposit return scheme that applies to everyone”.

The costs of Schoon Belonen are high. Some municipalities have already stopped due to excessive costs of civil service hours and communication tools. In the few cases where sufficient data was available, the costs per bottle and can cleaned up turned out to be high. “The cheapest system seems to come down to €0.15 per bottle or can,” calculated waste lawyer Hörchner.

The monitoring of the project leaves much to be desired. Almost no municipality has itself measured the effects on the amount of litter and on behaviour change in a verifiable and objective manner. There is no link to be made between the level of rewards and the effort made.

In addition, Rijkswaterstaat carried out 4 litter measurements. However, due to numerous factors, these figures cannot be related to efforts made or not made and costs incurred by the participating municipalities.

Due to poor measurements and a differing scope of many of the initiatives, no conclusion can therefore be drawn about the effect of Schoon Belonen on the quantity of bottles and cans in litter.

“Many of the participating municipalities have done their best to make Schoon Belonen a success,” says Buurman. “But the pilot project provides no view of a scalable and cost-efficient nationwide and manageable system”.

“Schoon Belonen has therefore not provided a competitive alternative to the extension of deposits to bottles and cans reported on by CE Delft on 1 September 2017. Deposits yield a 70% to 90% reduction in bottles and cans. It is therefore much more effective and cheaper than the Schoon Belonen system,” concludes Rob Buurman of Recycling Netwerk.

Rob Buurman

Director of Recycling Netwerk

rob@fairresourcefoundation.org

These conclusions are evident from the evaluation of the Schoon Belonen (Clean Reward) project, which was carried out by waste lawyer Rogier Hörchner. “So, with the Schoon Belonen method, you can never get the whole of the Netherlands clean,” notes Rob Buurman of Recycling Netwerk.

Schoon Belonen is a 2-year pilot scheme in which schools and clubs receive a financial reward for collecting small PET bottles and cans. This is intended to prevent and clean up litter. The project is a compromise between former State Secretary Mansveld of Infrastructure and the Environment and the business community, which is keen to prevent the introduction of a deposit on cans and bottles at all costs.

The Package Waste Fund (Afvalfonds Verpakkingen), the Nature and Environment Foundation (Stichting Natuur en Milieu) and the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) are supervising the implementation of the pilot, which takes place from 2015 to the end of 2017. According to State Secretary Mansveld, this pilot was to be the basis for a scalable, replicable and cost-efficient nationwide litter plan to be rolled out in 2018.

For his research, Hörchner submitted 160 Wob (Freedom of Information) requests to the more than 80 participating municipalities and Rijkswaterstaat. Despite the thousands of pages of response he received, few municipalities were able to provide answers to questions about the costs incurred and civil service hours, the number of participants and the size of the territory being managed within the municipality.

The pain points: small-scale, expensive and difficult to monitor

Hörchner's research reveals some key areas of pain of the Schoon Belonen pilot project.

It involves relatively small areas, mainly in the vicinity of the participating school or club. A whole host of environments struggling with litter are excluded *a priori* from the Schoon Belonen project: litter in nature, agricultural areas, countryside, station areas, business parks, main roads, rivers, canals, lakes and sea. In addition, many municipalities also indicated that the project progressed with difficulty due to busy schedules of schools, clubs and families. “This immediately indicates the limits of the project. The actions are small-scale. The municipalities state that it takes effort to keep up enthusiasm. The government should therefore not expect clubs and schools to clean up the whole of the Netherlands,” warns Rob Buurman. “This limitation of Schoon Belonen implies that the system can never be called a nationwide system. In terms of integrality, it will be increasingly less performant than a nationwide deposit return scheme that applies to everyone”.

The costs of Schoon Belonen are high. Some municipalities have already stopped due to excessive costs of civil service hours and communication tools. In the few cases where sufficient data was available, the costs per bottle and can cleaned up turned out to be high. “The cheapest system seems to come down to €0.15 per bottle or can,” calculated waste lawyer Hörchner.

The monitoring of the project leaves much to be desired. Almost no municipality has itself measured the effects on the amount of litter and on behaviour change in a verifiable and objective manner. There is no link to be made between the level of rewards and the effort made. In addition, Rijkswaterstaat carried out 4 litter measurements. However, due to numerous factors, these figures cannot be related to efforts made or not made and costs incurred by the participating municipalities.

Due to poor measurements and a differing scope of many of the initiatives, no conclusion can therefore be drawn about the effect of Schoon Belonen on the quantity of bottles and cans in litter.

“Many of the participating municipalities have done their best to make Schoon Belonen a success,” says Buurman. “But the pilot project provides no view of a scalable and cost-efficient nationwide and manageable system”.

“Schoon Belonen has therefore not provided a competitive alternative to the extension of deposits to bottles and cans reported on by CE Delft on 1 September 2017. Deposits yield a 70% to 90% reduction in bottles and cans. It is therefore much more effective and cheaper than the Schoon Belonen system,” concludes Rob Buurman of Recycling Netwerk.

Rob Buurman

Director of Recycling Netwerk

rob@fairresourcefoundation.org