“The polluter pays” is the slogan. And one of the hypotheses that goes with it is that expensive waste bags lead to sorting or to less waste all the same. But has this hypothesis been investigated?

Answer

Best,

The Decree on General Provisions on Environmental Policy (DABM, dated: 05/04/1995) describes the principles of environmental policy (= basic ideas regarding environmental policy). The polluter pays is one of them.

Almost all municipalities now draw up an environmental policy plan in which they list the initiatives with regard to the environment that they will take in the coming working year. If municipalities also have a cooperation agreement with the Flemish Government linked to this, they can reclaim part of their environmental policy costs.

Waste policy is an important issue for the municipalities. We have to make do with less waste, the waste has to be processed better. Selection is the message here. That is why one municipality after another has introduced the ‘VGF’ and the ‘PMD’ in the last 10-15 years. Both are basic raw materials for further processing (eg production compost in the case of organic waste) so that all that material is removed from the residual fraction. As a result, the amount of waste decreases. In order to make people more aware of the amount of waste and to promote selection, the higher prices of the garbage bags were indeed also used. This is partly to make people aware, but also to pay for the collection rounds (now 3 different instead of 1!) and the processing of the waste.

The municipalities, but especially the waste processing intermunicipal companies, must keep the data regarding waste collection. For example, there is indeed a significant decrease in waste production, and the target is even lower. Work is therefore ongoing on waste prevention.

I don’t know exactly what caused this drop, but I think it’s a combination of factors. For most, waste selection in the different fractions has long become a habit. In that case, the expensive residual waste bag is no longer a motivation method. People are also effectively becoming more aware of the waste problem (certainly after seeing, for example, the images of the waste piles in Italian cities), and the shops eagerly respond to this (partly also out of self-interest!): you have to pay for shopping bags, or you can don’t even get any more. They lure people to the shops with advertisements that you come home to them with less waste, producers (of textile soaps, for example) also respond to this by concentrating their soaps, making the bottles/boxes smaller,…

All this also results in less waste.

I hope this answered your question a bit.

Regards,
Christine Van der Heyden