After anyone’s first encounter with the recycling system in Brussels describes it as complex and confusing. However, it is very logical and well communicated. And thanks to it, the level of recycled waste in the city has increased dramatically.
The municipal company Bruxelles Propreté, tasked with managing the city’s waste, has calculated that, on average, each resident of the Brussels region produces one kilogram of waste per day. With a city population of over 2 million, as of 2022, with nearly 1% population growth each year for the last fifteen, that is a huge amount of waste. It is for this reason that campaigns are regularly held to raise awareness among citizens about the importance of reducing waste and recycling more. Improper sorting creates a ton of environmental and administrative problems, but it can also result in a hefty fine for those who do not follow the rules.
How does the system work
Residents of each building have instructions on what type of waste should be thrown into the different bags. In addition, for each apartment there is a schedule for the day and time range in which the residents must bring the separately sorted waste to the front of their building to be collected and recycled. The schedule varies by neighborhood and region. Citizens do not pay extra for recycling, but they have costs for buying the different types and colors of bags.
If the collected waste is not placed in the correct color bag or is mixed, then the violator is subject to a fine. It is a controversial practice to look for information about the offender in wrongly collected waste and to send him/her a fine. If the specific violator is not found, the entire building receives a fine, which is divided among the neighbors.
Recycling by color
Only plastic and metal waste, as well as beverage cans, should go into the blue bags. Residents of Brussels have been instructed to empty the bottles from their contents as well as crush them to take up less space. The remaining types of plastic go into white bags. Items that should not go in the blue bags are butter wrappers, yogurt cups, plastic shopping bags and aluminum foil – all of these should go in the white bags.
Yellow bags are for paper waste, for example newspapers, cardboard packaging or any other paper that is clean and free of greasy stains, for example. Paper towels, kitchen paper, stickers, wallpapers are not collected here.
Green sacks are collected less often according to the schedule. They should contain gardening waste, such as dry grass, flowers, or weeds. Christmas trees that are no longer needed after the holidays also go here. The instructions include information that soil or sand should not be placed in this bag. The path of this waste continues in the compost center in Brussels.
Orange bags are the ones for food waste, such as fruit peels, coffee grounds and others. Bones and eggshells should not go in here.
What happens to the glass? Some supermarkets offer the option of returning the bottles, giving back a small sum, as long as the receipt is kept that the products were purchased from that store. For those who do not keep this information, they should collect their unwanted bottles or jars in a carton and drop it off at a bottle bank. Many of these are located in different places in the city.
Special waste, such as expired medicines, should be returned to pharmacies. Large waste that do not fit in the colored sacks is removed by the municipality after prior arrangement.
The Results
The system is complex, but it is proven to work. The recycling rate in Belgium is 94.9% and has been growing since 2018. It is well above the European target of 70%. Belgium is the European leader in household packaging recycling. 764,122 tons of such materials were recycled in the country. This is an average of 64.9 kg of packaging waste per Belgian resident that was recycled in 2020. This amounts to 32.2 kg of glass, 16.9 kg of paper or cardboard packaging and 15.8 kg of plastic and metal.
