Despite the obligation to sort all household waste being introduced in 2010, Brussels residents are adhering less and less to waste collection rules, the region's waste management agency Bruxelles-Propreté says.
Alongside the recycling organisation Fost Plus, Bruxelles-Propreté is launching a citywide campaign to raise awareness on how best to manage household waste and encourage residents to present the correct waste for door-to-door collection.
“Our desire was to make the message as positive as possible and make the ‘taking out the trash’ ritual a moment of civic engagement, an essential habit – not a constraint,” Fost Plus explains.
The waste targeted by the campaign includes paper and cardboard, PMC packaging, food waste, garden waste and residual waste.
The right place to leave your bags is along your building’s façade – not at the foot of the trees, nor near the public garbage cans, the organisations emphasise in a press release.
City wastes away
Processing the city's waste efficiently starts at home. Too many residents are putting waste in the wrong bags, wrapping boxes poorly, and leaving bags open or in the wrong place. Some bags are also filled beyond their 15 kg limit or glass is put in the white bags. All of these errors make it harder to keep the city clean.
That leads to untidy streets on collection days but can also cause accidents for employees and a give the city's cleaning services an unfair reputation, Bruxelles-Propreté says.
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The campaign will therefore focus on people’s attitudes towards waste collection. This has already allowed the organisations to identify and overcome several barriers for local residents and better define its public communications.
Efforts already underway
From 19 April onward, the campaign can be found on display in metro stations, bus shelters, local and social media, and on Bruxelles-Propreté collection trucks.
13 Brussels municipalities have also been selected for target actions, including a marking on the ground with biological and ephemeral paint that will indicate to the inhabitants the exact place where to deposit their white, blue, yellow, green and orange garbage bags.
Some municipalities will also extend this action to other streets using stencils and paint that will be made available to them.
A specific website has also been launched to highlight the rules for presenting waste for collection, containing the general rules for all bags and rules specific to each bag.
