Dutch businesses refusing to place vending machines for returning deposit bottles, cans

The Netherlands needs more vending machines for returning deposit cans and bottles, but many businesses are refusing to place them, even for free, AD reports. For example, NS said that it wouldn’t install anymore for the time being, and petrol stations claim they are “too big.”

Stichting Verpact, the organization that handles the collection of deposit bottles and cans on behalf of businesses, must place 2,600 additional collection machines and 2,800 collection points where the deposit is paid out manually by 1 January 2027. For each return point it falls short, the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate will fine it 25,000 euros per week.

Verpact is, therefore, doing everything in its power to place the machines. “We pay for and install the machine and arrange the processing of the returned deposit packaging,” chairman Hester Klein Lankhorst said, according to the newspaper. She appealed to companies, institutions, and organizations to cooperate.

However, according to AD, many organizations on the list for installing return machines have no intention of doing so. NS, for example, only has machines at five stations and does not plan to expand that number in the foreseeable future. “We now have sixteen machines in Amsterdam, Eindhoven, The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht in total,” says a spokesperson. "We first want to learn how the collection is going there before we place machines at more stations." According to the spokesperson, train passengers still have to get used to returning bottles and cans in this way.

Verpact is also hopeful of the thousands of petrol stations in the country for return points, but they, too, are reluctant. “Petrol stations along national roads are legally required to return deposits,” Maarten van Gaans-Gijbels of the trade association Vemobin told AD. “They all comply with this, but it is often done manually. A machine is too expensive and too big for many members.” The fact that Verpact is now paying for the machine does not solve the “lack of space,” he said. “Our members are waiting for the machines to be further developed so that they become smaller and fit in the shop.”

Amusement parks are installing machines “where possible,” Karin Kuiper of the Club van Elf, which covers the major attractions, told the newspaper. “I guess that more than half of the major attractions now have one, but it is not possible everywhere.”