GREAT ENTHUSIASM FOR DEPOSIT RETURN SCHEME AT WASTE CONFERENCE

“A clear insight into the world of plastic waste”, is how a female visitor described the congress ‘De recycling draait door’ (Recycling goes on), which the VAOP organised for municipalities in Scheveningen on 1 October. If one thing became clear, it is that there is still a lot of fog and lack of clarity surrounding the plastic dossier. “Independent figures are lacking”, the Recycling Netwerk concludes.

At a streamlined congress in the style of the TV show De Wereld Draait Door, the

recycling of plastic waste in our own country was central. On 1 January, all municipalities must start collecting plastic separately and far from all of them are ready for this.

One of the most important bottlenecks became clear once again at the congress: there is too much lack of clarity surrounding figures and there are too many nice stories. Reason for executive board member Sandra Korthuis on behalf of the VNG to speak out strongly against the business community, which is responsible for the recycling of plastic packaging. ‘Producer responsibility has been weakly implemented. With today's knowledge, we would never have participated in the Packaging Decree two years ago’, was her message.

The business community, for example, has been trying to get rid of the deposit system for years, even though it can actually ensure environmental benefits, and the results in neighbouring countries, such as Germany, are proof of this. Upon her call for who is in favour of extending the deposit system to small plastic bottles, Korthuis also received the support of an overwhelming majority of the civil servants, aldermen, mayors and representatives of the waste sector and the plastic industry in the room.

1 January

How far along are the municipalities to be ready on 1 January? According to director Jan Storm of Nedvang, they are already far: 9 million Dutch people already separate their plastic, 214 municipalities are already actively working on it, 216 are in preparation for it and 55 municipalities recycle plastic through post-separation.

However, independent figures are lacking, reacted Robbert van Duin, chairman of the Recycling Netwerk to the Nedvang figures. Since December 2008, no independent figures can be found about the Plastic Heroes campaign. And if you take those results, it turns out that in the pilots only an average of 7.9 kg of plastic packaging waste was collected per household per year. While a household has an average of 80 kg of plastic waste per year.

The figures on how much of it is actually reused are also foggy. Van Duin: ‘We are worried about the boomerang effect among citizens. If they find out that none of all the nice figures are true, they might stop separating plastic waste.’

The Dutch want to

Alderman Michael Boddeke of the municipality of Apeldoorn agreed. ‘Since most Dutch people want to recycle, it is important that we inform them about what happens to the waste. The processing of plastic waste must quickly get underway in the Netherlands. Otherwise there is the danger that we cannot make the nice stories come true.’

A number of success stories of municipalities were also presented at the congress, such as Nederweert, where the municipality has a system that yields 27 kg per household per year, and the Groningen municipality of Westerkwartier which has been working with its own waste bag for years and achieves the best results in the Netherlands: 70 kg per household per year and a participation of 90 percent of households. It was not for nothing that the municipality was awarded the VAOP Recycling Award 2009 by VAOP chairman Jan Oosterhof.

Thirty years

Politics also made its voice heard. Former MP Ad Lansink, the ‘man of the Ladder of’, was annoyed by the cautious government policy and that in thirty years we have made virtually no progress with recycling in the Netherlands. SP MP Remi Poppe agreed: there is too little logistical innovation, meaning that recycling requires a lot of transport and thus CO2 pollution.’ That is why he wants to keep focusing on post-separation of waste. But prevention is of course preferred, he quickly added.

Read also the report of Afval Online on the VAOP website

“A clear insight into the world of plastic waste”, is how a female visitor described the congress ‘De recycling draait door’, which the VAOP organised for municipalities in Scheveningen on 1 October. If one thing became clear, it is that there is still a lot of fog and lack of clarity surrounding the plastic dossier. “Independent figures are lacking”, the Recycling Netwerk concludes.