Pure spring water and plastic waste, a difficult marriage

On Sunday, the producer of Spa will distribute more than 300,000 disposable bottles at the "20 km through Brussels" sports event. This annual peak of plastic disposable packaging distribution falls during "Mei PlasticVrij" (Plastic-Free May) this year. For Conscious Crew and Recycling Netwerk Benelux, this is the reason to call out the hypocrisy of the company Spadel with an action.

The producer of Spa builds its entire image around eco-friendliness, but at the marathon, they do distribute more than 300,000 bottles that are intended to be thrown away after just a few minutes. This is a distressing symbol of the disposable sales model, which leads to litter all year round.

If they end up in a public bin, they go to the incinerator. If they end up on the roadside, clearing up that rubbish is paid for by the municipal cleaning services and therefore by the taxpayer. If they are not cleared up, they eventually end up in the plastic soup via our waterways.

The organisations are offering people a free reusable water bottle in exchange for a disposable Spa bottle.

At the end of March, Marc du Bois, managing director of Spadel, spoke disparagingly about a deposit system. The company does claim, however, that all the distributed bottles are made from 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 system. Indeed, due to food safety regulations, 95% of the recycled PET used must come from food applications. This simply cannot be guaranteed via collection using the Belgian blue bag.

With this action, the NGOs call on the company Spadel to drop its opposition and speak out in favour of a deposit system.

Why exactly are we asking Spadel to give up its opposition to a deposit system?

Spadel is the number 1 market leader in bottled water in the Benelux, where it sells its brands Spa and Bru. In total, Spadel owns six brands of mineral and spring water: Spa, Bru, Watwiller, Carola, Brecon Carreg and, since 2017, the Bulgarian DEVIN. Spadel sells these brands in 22 different countries worldwide, making the company the regional market leader in Alsace and Wales, and the national market leader in Bulgaria.

As market leader, Spadel has both the responsibility and the leverage to make a difference.

In 2017, the family-owned company led by managing director Marc du Bois achieved a turnover of €289.0 million, and its net profit rose by 53.4% to €26.4 million. For these results, Spadel sold a total of 846.7 million litres of bottled water. In doing so, Spadel creates a large plastic footprint.

In 2016, more than 88% of the total number of bottles Spadel brought to the Dutch market were plastic. In the Netherlands alone, Spadel thus has an annual plastic footprint of 4,141 tonnes of plastic packaging. Of this, 2,634 tonnes is virgin plastic, according to Spadel's responses to a survey by Greenpeace Netherlands. By way of comparison: in the Netherlands, Spadel puts more virgin plastic on the market each year than the weight of the Atomium in Brussels or the total weight of around 439 Savannah elephants.

In Belgium, this plastic footprint of Spadel is likely to be even larger, since in addition to Spa, Spadel also sells the Bru brand here, and Belgians drink significantly more mineral and spring water: an average of 129 litres per person per year in Belgium compared to an average of 22 litres per person per year in the Netherlands. In any case, the 440 million litres of beverage bottled for the Spa brand in Belgium already accounted for a plastic footprint of between 7,744 tonnes and 9,680 tonnes of single-use plastic packaging in 2016.

Furthermore, all plastic bottles that Spadel puts on the market in the Netherlands and Belgium are single-use. In Belgium, this disposable bottle can end up in three ways. The PET bottle is collected together with many other plastics in the blue bag, after which it is downcycled; thrown into a public bin or cleared away by the cleaning service, after which it ends up in the incinerator; or the plastic bottle ends up as litter, eventually joining the growing plastic soup.

That the latter scenario is not unlikely is proven by a Dutch survey showing that the Spa brand is at number 2 of the plastic bottles most frequently found in litter by brand. Moreover, as a beverage producer, Spadel contributes by far the most to Dutch litter of all water brands found, with a share of over 21%.

It is remarkable that Spadel has not yet spoken out in favour of deposits. Besides the fact that Spadel portrays itself as a company with a heart for the environment and nature, Spadel has formulated several objectives for which a deposit system would be a logical or even necessary tool.

Spadel says it wants to reduce its ecological footprint

On Sunday, the producer of Spa will distribute more than 300,000 disposable bottles at the "20 km through Brussels" sports event. This annual peak of plastic disposable packaging distribution falls during "Mei PlasticVrij" (Plastic-Free May) this year. For Conscious Crew and Recycling Netwerk Benelux, this is the reason to call out the hypocrisy of the company Spadel with an action.

The producer of Spa builds its entire image around eco-friendliness, but at the marathon, they do distribute more than 300,000 bottles that are intended to be thrown away after just a few minutes. This is a distressing symbol of the disposable sales model, which leads to litter all year round.

If they end up in a public bin, they go to the incinerator. If they end up on the roadside, clearing up that rubbish is paid for by the municipal cleaning services and therefore by the taxpayer. If they are not cleared up, they eventually end up in the plastic soup via our waterways.

The organisations are offering people a free reusable water bottle in exchange for a disposable Spa bottle.

At the end of March, Marc du Bois, managing director of Spadel, spoke disparagingly about a deposit system. The company does claim, however, that all the distributed bottles are made from 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 system. Indeed, due to food safety regulations, 95% of the recycled PET used must come from food applications. This simply cannot be guaranteed via collection using the Belgian blue bag.

With this action, the NGOs call on the company Spadel to drop its opposition and speak out in favour of a deposit system.

Why exactly are we asking Spadel to give up its opposition to a deposit system?