Domestic waste
Up to 2007, the waste that households produced was not being recycled. In the following period of 10 years, the government implemented several laws to ensure that inhabitants separate their domestic waste. In comparison to other countries, the Netherlands is now a forerunner. Most Dutch people are used to have separate bins for plastic, paper, organic waste, glass, and residual waste. As a result, approximately 60% of all domestic waste is being separated now. This means that each inhabitant still throws away 4 kilograms of unsorted waste every week.
Each municipality is being forced by the law to collect the domestic waste of all the households. They are however free in the manner they want to organize this. Some communities have a house-to-house collection, others have made central collection points in each street.
Besides this, municipalities are also obliged to have one bigger collection point, where the inhabitants can throw away their waste. In total, Dutch municipalities collected 8.5 billion kilograms of domestic waste. This comes down to 494 kilograms per inhabitant, of which 288 kilograms are separated waste.
What does this look like in practice, for an average Dutch household? Living in a small village, I am used to separating my domestic waste into different bins and containers. Each inhabitant knows the schedule of the house-to-house collection and when you have to bring which waste container to the side of the street, so it can be picked up. Additionally, I bring the residual waste to a small collection point at the end of my street and I bring jars and glass bottles to the containers which are situated next to the two major supermarkets in town.
DepositsÂ
Apart from the plastic packaging that is being separated by the households and collected by the municipality, there is another major plastic waste product: plastic bottles. Every year, Dutch consumers use almost 1,5 billion plastic bottles, which comes down to 80 bottles per person per year. To recycle these, another kind of collection process has been organized. For plastic bottles of more than 0.5 liters, consumers can receive a deposit from the supermarket where they turn the bottles in. The supermarket then sells the collected bottles, after which they can be recycled. The additional idea behind this is that non-returning costumers are paying for the waste produced.
A critical assessment
Despite the policies, 206 kilograms of collected domestic waste is still residual. This is an improvement in comparison to 2014, when the residual waste was about 242 kilograms, although we can do way better. It has been estimated that we can separate 80% of our waste: that is almost 25% more than we do now. Municipalities will have to make it easy to separate domestic waste and households will all have to take their role seriously.
Regarding the deposits, it is important to note that it only applies to larger plastic bottles. This means that more than half of the used 1,5 billion water bottles, namely the smaller ones, cannot be returned in the supermarkets and end up as litter in most cases. Therefore, the government promised to charge the smaller bottles with a deposit in 2021 if the amount of those bottles found in residual waste is not reduced by 70%-90%.