2023-09-08 15:41:52
There should be many more collection points for deposit cans and bottles, says outgoing State Secretary Vivianne Heijnen (Environment). She is disappointed with the number of packages that are now being taken.
Packaging manufacturers must take additional measures this year to ensure that more deposit cans and bottles are collected, the State Secretary says. She spoke to the industry this week, it reported AD Friday.
The business community must at least collect 90 percent of the deposit bottles, but the actual percentage remains below 70 percent. “I really said that I am disappointed, that things have to be better,” says Heijnen before the weekly cabinet meeting.
If the business community does not improve, the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) can enforce it, she warns. The ILT has sent a letter to the Packaging Waste Fund Foundation with the request to come up with an improvement plan in the short term to achieve the target.
According to the ILT, the Waste Fund is violating the law with its current working method. The fund is responsible for the collection and recycling of packaging on behalf of the business community.
Too few collection points at stations
Heijnen wants to see collection points at many more train stations. “We are now almost a year further, and if you only have a collection point in five of the four hundred stations, I don’t think that is very good, to put it with an understatement.”
The NS will make a decision in October regarding installing deposit machines at more train stations, a spokesperson says. That month, an evaluation will take place regarding the existing collection points at the central stations of Utrecht, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Eindhoven.
The NS has expressed an ambition to install vending machines at seventeen stations this year and to ultimately have deposit collection points at fifty stations. The machines are located outside the gates so that people who do not travel by train can also use them.
Since July 1, 2021, there has been a 15 cent deposit on small bottles. There was already a quarter deposit on larger bottles. Since April 1 of this year, there is also a 15 cent deposit on cans.
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