Over 1 million small plastic bottles per day not returned for deposit

Since July 2021, a deposit system has applied to small plastic bottles - water bottles and soft drink bottles, for example - in the Netherlands. But only 58 percent of the sold bottles were returned for a deposit last year. That amounts to 400 million bottles not returned that year, or over one million plastic bottles per day, AD reports based on figures from the Packaging Waste Fund.

When large bottles are included in the figures, 68 percent of plastic bottles got returned for deposit last year. The legal target is that 90 percent of all bottles must be collected. The business community, united in the Packaging Waste Fund, is obliged to achieve the target. The Environmental Inspectorate can take measures if it deems it necessary.

The fact that over 40 percent of small plastic bottles aren’t returned for a deposit is not because people aren’t familiar with the system - 91 percent of Netherlands residents know about its existence. Netherlands residents have been able to return glass and cardboard for decades, and the deposit scheme for tin cans started earlier this year.

“You can only conclude that people do not want to or that it is not made easy enough for them. We’ll have to deal with that,” Hester Klein Lankhorst of the Packaging Waste Fund told AD.

“A big problem is with on the go, for example, if you have been on the train, walk out of the station, and still have that bottle. That often ends up in the regular trash. NS stations often have a collection device, but walking there still takes too much effort. I experience that myself,” Klein Lankhorts said.

The business community has committed to placing more collection points at busy areas like schools, amusement parks, and festivals. “But you can’t put 30 devices on a station; people will also have to make a little more effort,” Klein Lankhorst added, pointing out that there are already 28,000 collection points in the Netherlands.

The Packaging Waste Fund, therefore, also hired behavioral scientists to investigate why people don’t return their bottles and how to change that.