The unbearable slowness of environmental policy

Waste management policy in the Netherlands is simply failing to get off the ground. For about 40 years, waste prevention has been the most neglected guiding principle of environmental policy.

Prevention has had the highest priority in Dutch waste policy since 1979, ahead of reuse, incineration, and landfilling of waste. However, it took nearly ten years before the first policy steps were taken, under pressure from annually recurring parliamentary motions and unsolicited advice from the former environmental council CRMH:

In the late 1980s, a general prevention target was eventually formulated for the total amount of waste, along with a number of prevention targets for specific 'priority' waste streams, such as packaging materials.

1. Waste prevention under the Packaging Covenants

Although prevention was the highest policy priority, waste policy over the past decades has primarily focused on preventing landfilling, on ensuring energy generation with more waste incineration capacity, and on collection for the recycling of a number of selected "priority" waste streams.

Between 1991 and 2006, three covenants were concluded for various types of packaging material, which included agreements on the amount of packaging waste prevention to be achieved.

1.1. The first Packaging Covenant

In the first Packaging Covenant, a concrete agreement was made "to bring the quantity (in Kton) of new packaging to be placed on the market by the year 2000 at the latest below the level of the quantity (in Kton) of that same packaging in the reference year 1986."

The obligation to achieve a result was also included to reduce the number of Ktons of packaging placed on the market in 1997 by at least 3% compared to 1991 (Article 4.3).

In addition, further best-effort obligations were agreed for the packaging industry: 10% less in 1997 compared to 1991 and 10% less in 2000 compared to 1986.

However, the various photobooks with examples of successful prevention measures could not conceal the fact that in 1997, when the transition was made to the second Packaging Covenant, the amount of packaging waste had not decreased, but had actually increased. According to the RIVM, this was a substantial increase of over 15% (compared to 1986).

1.2. Packaging Covenant II

The Packaging Covenant had a term until 1 January 2001 (Art. 26) with interim evaluations in 1994 and 1997, which would assess whether the best-effort obligations in the area of waste prevention could be converted into performance obligations (Art. 23).

In contrast, however, the Packaging Covenant was replaced as early as 15 December 1997 by the second Packaging Covenant. This covenant was presented as a necessary update in relation to the implementation of new European regulations, with more commitment from (branch organisations of) the business community. In fact, however, it primarily involved a significant watering down of the agreements on waste prevention and product reuse. Furthermore, no agreements were included regarding concrete measures to be taken.

The prevention obligation was heavily watered down in the second Packaging Covenant by redefining the agreed waste prevention. The prevention obligation for the period 1986-2001 was now defined in terms of a 10% reduction against the volume of packaging that would have existed if it had grown as fast as GDP.

Note: Especially for packaging consumption, it makes no sense to establish a 1-to-1 relationship with GDP growth. Packaging is mostly used for food and beverages. GDP growth (in terms of currency) obviously does not imply a corresponding growth in the number of kilograms of food and the number of litres of beverages put on the market.

Through this obfuscating trick, the industry was allowed to increase the amount of packaging waste. The objective of the First Covenant to reduce packaging waste was thus undone in this Second Covenant.

The results from 2001 speak volumes. Based on this trick, the Packaging Commission reported in its 2001 annual report: "With a prevention result of 27%, the business community amply meets the prevention obligation agreed for 2001 of at least 10% (relative to the volume in 1986 adjusted for the development of gross domestic product)." (Packaging Commission, Annual Report 2001, October 2002, pages 7 and 11).

However, further reading reveals that the monitored volume of packaging waste had actually risen to 2,582 kton, exactly 10% more than the baseline volume of 1986.

1.3. Packaging Covenant III

Although there was little enthusiasm on the part of the government for a third covenant at the end of the second Packaging Covenant, it finally materialised after a new cabinet took office.

Waste management policy in the Netherlands is simply failing to get off the ground. For about 40 years, waste prevention has been the most neglected guiding principle of environmental policy.

Prevention has had the highest priority in Dutch waste policy since 1979, ahead of reuse, incineration, and landfilling of waste. However, it took nearly ten years before the first policy steps were taken, under pressure from annually recurring parliamentary motions and unsolicited advice from the former environmental council CRMH:

In the late 1980s, a general prevention target was eventually formulated for the total amount of waste, along with a number of prevention targets for specific 'priority' waste streams, such as packaging materials.

1. Waste prevention under the Packaging Covenants

Although prevention was the highest policy priority, waste policy over the past decades has primarily focused on preventing landfilling, on ensuring energy generation with more waste incineration capacity, and on collection for the recycling of a number of selected "priority" waste streams.

Between 1991 and 2006, three covenants were concluded for various types of packaging material, which included agreements on the amount of packaging waste prevention to be achieved.

1.1. The first Packaging Covenant

In the first Packaging Covenant, a concrete agreement was made "to bring the quantity (in Kton) of new packaging to be placed on the market by the year 2000 at the latest below the level of the quantity (in Kton) of that same packaging in the reference year 1986."

The obligation to achieve a result was also included to reduce the number of Ktons of packaging placed on the market in 1997 by at least 3% compared to 1991 (Article 4.3).

In addition, further best-effort obligations were agreed for the packaging industry: 10% less in 1997 compared to 1991 and 10% less in 2000 compared to 1986.

However, the various photobooks with examples of successful prevention measures could not conceal the fact that in 1997, when the transition was made to the second Packaging Covenant, the amount of packaging waste had not decreased, but had actually increased. According to the RIVM, this was a substantial increase of over 15% (compared to 1986).

1.2. Packaging Covenant II

The Packaging Covenant had a term until 1 January 2001 (Art. 26) with interim evaluations in 1994 and 1997, which would assess whether the best-effort obligations in the area of waste prevention could be converted into performance obligations (Art. 23).

In contrast, however, the Packaging Covenant was replaced as early as 15 December 1997 by the second Packaging Covenant. This covenant was presented as a necessary update in relation to the implementation of new European regulations, with more commitment from (branch organisations of) the business community. In fact, however, it primarily involved a significant watering down of the agreements on waste prevention and product reuse. Furthermore, no agreements were included regarding concrete measures to be taken.

The prevention obligation was heavily watered down in the second Packaging Covenant by redefining the agreed waste prevention. The prevention obligation for the period 1986-2001 was now defined in terms of a 10% reduction against the volume of packaging that would have existed if it had grown as fast as GDP.

Note: Especially for packaging consumption, it makes no sense to establish a 1-to-1 relationship with GDP growth. Packaging is mostly used for food and beverages. GDP growth (in terms of currency) obviously does not imply a corresponding growth in the number of kilograms of food and the number of litres of beverages put on the market.

Through this obfuscating trick, the industry was allowed to increase the amount of packaging waste. The objective of the First Covenant to reduce packaging waste was thus undone in this Second Covenant.

The results from 2001 speak volumes. Based on this trick, the Packaging Commission reported in its 2001 annual report: “With a prevention result of 27%, the business community amply meets the prevention obligation agreed for 2001 of at least 10% (relative to the volume in 1986 adjusted for the development of gross domestic product).” (Packaging Commission, Annual Report 2001, October 2002, pages 7 and 11).

However, further reading reveals that the monitored volume of packaging waste had actually risen to 2,582 kton, exactly 10% more than the baseline volume of 1986.

1.3. Packaging Covenant III

Although there was little enthusiasm on the part of the government for a third covenant at the end of the second Packaging Covenant, it finally materialised after a new cabinet took office. After a kind of 'covenant-free era' regarding waste prevention, the signatures were finally set in December 2002.

The general prevention obligation for packaging was also linked to GDP growth in this Packaging Covenant III. This time, however, there was no longer any mention of 10% prevention relative to that GDP growth. The prevention obligation involved limiting the growth of packaging consumption to 2/3 of GDP growth (between 1999 and 2005). In fact, this was a less heavy obligation than "10% prevention relative to GDP growth", unless average annual GDP growth exceeded 5.6% (which was highly unlikely).

Ultimately, the Packaging Commission concluded at the end of the covenant period:

“The prevention target has not been achieved. GDP increased by 12.2 per cent in the period from 1 January 1999 to 31 December 2005. The volume of packaging placed on the market increased by 10.4 per cent during this period. That is more than 2 percentage points above the agreed allowable increase in the volume of packaging.”

(Packaging Commission – Annual Report 2005; October 2006; page 10). The original goal of the first Packaging Covenant to reduce the volume of packaging is drifting further and further away.

1.4. Tinkering with the monitoring

When using the presented figures for comparison, it must also be kept in mind that these monitoring figures often give far too positive a picture. The figures underestimate the increase in packaging waste. This has several causes:

First of all, it can be noted that valid monitoring of waste prevention has received hardly any attention since the very beginning of prevention policy. In 1997, the Netherlands Court of Audit concluded that “the ministry still has insufficient insight into achieving the general prevention target and the targets for priority waste investigated by the Court of Audit.”

The Court of Audit pointed out (nearly ten years after the prevention targets were set!) that it is important "to eliminate the existing discrepancy between the formulated targets on the one hand and the available monitoring data on waste and methods to determine waste prevention on the other."

The Hague reporters of the newspaper Trouw summarised it as follows: “Verifiable targets are missing and information about the amount of waste and the environmental damage of waste is not available.”

It must be remembered that the design of the monitoring of packaging waste was a negotiation result and not a factual measurement. It was decided to base the system on an inventory of declarations of packaging placed on the market by a selection of companies... and to extrapolate this into a total estimate.

Until the mid-1990s, this total estimate of the input of packaging was still compared to the total output of packaging via the relevant waste streams. The annual reports from RIVM on this matter repeatedly showed the same kind of discrepancy that the Court of Audit also observed.

For the Second Packaging Covenant, it was then agreed that a Packaging Commission would provide the annual reports instead of the RIVM. Although this commission often complained about the "insufficient coverage rate" behind the reported amount of packaging placed on the market (particularly with plastic packaging), it otherwise focused entirely on monitoring separately collected packaging waste and ignored the discrepancies that were evident, for example, from the large stream of packaging waste in household residual waste.

The consequence: to this day, the total volume of packaging placed on the market that is reported (also in the relevant policy documents) is significantly smaller than the total volume of packaging waste measured in the relevant waste streams.

Finally, the impact of the many "corrections" on the monitoring is relevant:

The annual reports of the Packaging Commission provided a correction to the presented monitoring results from previous annual reports every year. In doing so, the figures (in 'settlement years') often turned out to be less positive than previously thought. For example, the monitoring results for 2001 were later adjusted upwards to 2,785 kton, which was not 10%, but 19% more than the baseline volume in 1986 (Packaging Commission – Annual Report 2003; October 2004; page 8).

The monitoring methodology was also revised several times during the covenant period. Certain types of packaging were 'defined away' as packaging. The most prominent example of this is rubbish bags, which accounted for more than 10% of the established volume of plastic packaging waste in 1986 (Bureau B&G – Analysis Document Sub-project Plastic Packaging; June 1990; Summary page 1).

Nevertheless, the prevention obligation was never met for plastic packaging. In 2005, even according to the statement of the Packaging Commission, almost 30% more plastic packaging was placed on the market than in 1986.

2. Waste prevention in the Framework Agreements under the Packaging Decree

A year before the conclusion of the Third Packaging Covenant, on 17 December 2001, the ‘Draft Decree on the management of packaging and paper and cardboard’ was published in the Government Gazette.