Belgian Local Authorities Raise Recycling Rates Using Plastic Omnium’s Ecosourcing solution
posted in Articles |An enlightened group of local authorities in north Belgium have joined forces - as IOK Waste Management - in order to work collectively to reduce waste across their 29 municipalities encompassing almost 500,000 inhabitants.
With demanding government-set targets of reducing annual household waste to a maximum of 150 Kg per inhabitant by 2010 whilst keeping waste management costs low, IOK turned to one of Europe’s leading waste management and recycling companies, Plastic Omnium, to help them achieve their objectives.
In order to encourage householders to increase recycling without increasing budgets, IOK knew it was essential to introduce a strategic programme that would stimulate waste prevention, provide separate collection, and promote recycling.
To help them do this, IOK adopted Plastic Omnium’s Ecosourcing system so that they could better understand their residents’ waste habits and set a financial incentive to encourage them to recycle more, with the ultimate aim of reducing mixed household waste.
A pilot programme was introduced in one of the key localities, Mol, covering 12.500 residents and combining both rural and urban areas. The Mol pilot was focused on implementing three key elements of the Ecosourcing solution; measurement and weighing, variable charging, and communications.
The process began by measuring and registering waste containers to individual homes and fitting them with an identification tag. The Ecosourcing ID and Weighing System then enabled IOK to automatically weigh the waste containers by the systems on the collection vehicles and generate individual invoices based on the actual residual (i.e. non-recyclable) waste produced by each householder.
This variable charging system was carried out by generating invoices once a year on a ‘pay as you throw’ basis with average invoices reaching about €18 - around £12. The project proved highly successful in stimulating waste prevention and increasing recyclate through better sorting. The pilot also allowed local authorities to test all aspects of running a long-term ‘pay as you throw’ operation to enable the scheme to be rolled out to other municipalities.
The Mol pilot project also helped create the highly-targeted communications campaigns that have since been implemented across all IOK locations. It created an effective programme of regular meetings to be followed for all campaigns that brought together IOK as a group, Plastic Omnium together with specific working groups. These were made up of key representatives who would be involved in the roll-out and success of the scheme including local politicians, finance and marketing specialists, technical teams and the police etc.
A direct communications campaign aimed at residents was also implemented, led by Plastic Omnium and solely focused on persuading the public to recycle more. This involved personal communications to householders through three direct mailings, info-brochures and door-to-door surveys. This worked alongside more general communications tools such as posters, videos, information panels, hotline services, info-meetings, in addition to dedicated websites and local press – all of which were utilised to ensure householders were fully informed on the new services at every individual stage.
The results of the pilot phase were hugely encouraging; household waste was reduced from approximately 550 Kg per person to 121 Kg per person in Mol between 1998 and 2005, the reduction in waste treatment cost was down 33% and collection costs were down 20%.
Plastic Omnium’s Ecosourcing solution has now been operational across IOK municipalities
since 1998 and demonstrates a dramatic change in residents’ behaviour and commitment to recycling principally because of charging. In addition to decreasing mixed household waste in all 29 municipalities, it has also succeeded in reducing the global cost of waste management.
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