Decrease in plastic bottles in litter is stagnating

ANP

NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 00:40

The decrease in the number of plastic bottles in litter has stagnated in the past year. This is evident from a recent report by litter specialist Dirk Groot, also known as the ‘Litter Inator’.

On July 1, 2021, a deposit on small plastic bottles was introduced. Six months later, the number of plastic bottles in litter had dropped by almost 70 percent. That percentage remained unchanged last year, while the cabinet wanted to achieve a reduction of 90 percent in 2022 with the introduction of a deposit on plastic bottles.

Groot notes that the advertising campaigns, collection points and deposit machines at train stations have not led to a further decrease. In five years, he registered 111,208 drink packagings in 65 municipalities over a distance of more than 3,200 kilometres. The data he collects is used by Rijkswaterstaat, among others.

Three measures

Groot proposes three measures to achieve the desired reduction of 90 percent. To begin with, he believes that a deposit should be levied on all plastic bottles, including bottles containing dairy or juice, for example. Secondly, there must be better labels that do not peel off easily and, finally, damaged bottles must also be accepted. According to Groot, the latter category now has no “pick-up value”.

Incidentally, his research shows that the number of cans in litter has increased by more than 10 percent since the introduction of a deposit on plastic bottles. A law for deposits on cans was to come into effect on 1 January 2023, but it was postponed by at least three months after companies indicated that there are too many uncertainties surrounding delivery times for counting and sorting machines. Groot foresees the same kind of problems with the cans as with the plastic bottles in terms of damaged copies.

Source