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How Flanders deals with its waste

Prosperity has come at a price in Belgium. As affluence has grown, so has the country’s waste mountain — a problem that all governments are finding increasingly hard to ignore.

However, the region of Flanders in Belgium claims to have found a solution, and the world’s waste authorities are beating a path to its door. Since 2005, its population has increased and the region has got richer, but the total amount of waste g enerated has stayed the same. In economists’ terms, Flanders has “decoupled” waste from economic growth, and delegations from Russia, China and the United Kingdom have all been there recently to find out how they have done it.

Britain is particularly interested. U.K. figures for household waste are roughly comparable with those of Flanders, but there are startling differences: Flanders’ recycling rates of 72 per cent in rural areas and over 60 per cent in urban areas are among the highest in the world, dwarfing England’s 28 per cent.

One small part of the answer was last week strutting around the suburban garden of Vigoreux Aime, 71. He proudly showed off his chickens — red and black bantams and white leghorns that he keeps for the eggs. He says: “They eat everything — grass cuttings too wet for the compost, and they even love bones.”

The chickens are part of Flanders’ system of taxes and incentives to reduce its waste mountain. The public waste agency, Ovam, has allowed local authorities to introduce subsidies for a range of waste prevention measures — from compost bins, to chickens and reuse centres.

At the spotless civic amenity centre in Ghent, the waste categories are organised into dozens of disposal units. There is one for batteries, one for chip pan oil (which will eventually be used as vehicle fuel), and others for furniture, paper, wood and cans. There is even a place where dead pets can be brought for cremation.

And Flanders is well down the track of getting people to pay for what they waste — the system Britain is considering. Under the current system, Ghent citizens can make up to 24 free separate visits a year to drop off their bulky waste. Other recyclable goods are collected for free on separate well-publicised days for each type of material. But households have to pay to dispose of the waste they do not recycle. In Ghent, the price is €1.30 a sack for any rubbish that cannot be recycled.

Flanders can avoid land-filling largely because it burns most of its waste. The local incinerator in Ghent, next to Ovam’s offices, was refurbished in 1996 and takes 1,00,000 tonnes of waste a year. Last year, it started to recover energy as steam, using it to heat the university hospital 1 km away, via a pipeline. Flanders’ planning laws, designed to phase out landfill, do place strict limits and quality standards on incineration. But while Ghent has a state-of-the-art “energy from waste plant,” incineration is still considered controversial by environment groups and there is no avoiding that there are problems with it.

Ovam’s taxes and local authority subsidies are the extension of the principle that the polluter pays. Landfill is taxed at €75 a tonne, while incineration is taxed at just under €7. When the scheme was introduced 10 years ago, waste fell by 30 per cent.

Paul Dobbelaere, general manager of Ivago, the public-private partnership that manages the waste — recyclable and not — of the 2,50,000 people of Ghent and its neighbour Destelbergen, says: “You have to be sure you pick up all the waste. Once that’s achieved, you must find an outlet for everything you collect.”

Mr. Dobbelaere counters the suggestion that the new incinerator that heats the hospital could increase waste figures because of its constant demand for rubbish. It always runs to full capacity, he says, but the city only supplies 60 per cent of its waste. This way, Ivago can earn an income from companies that pay to dispose of their waste — the remaining 40 per cent.

Ivago says people have bought into the whole recycling waste system, and the authorities have communicated the recycling scheme well — not just what they collect, and when, but in leaflets that explain why.

The people of Ghent, it seems, are mostly impressed. “It was so good it meant the council got re-elected,” says chocolatier Mia Ackaert.

What has proved more difficult has been reaching the poorer communities in the city centre. Recycling rates are lower here, at 62 per cent. A government law means that Ovam is allowed to communicate only in Flemish, which makes it hard to reach the many different immigrant communities. With high-rise blocks, it is difficult to tell who is responsible for which waste, so some of the central chutes down which people used to throw unsorted rubbish have been blocked up by Ivago.

Another scheme flourishing in Ghent is the Kringwinkel chain of “reuse” stores, in which goods are dismantled and repaired. Rows of washing machines and fridges sit next to stripped-off components such as computer cables. The white goods come with six-month guarantees. “Everything can be reused,” says the manager, Els Dujen. “There is demand for everything we supply — if it’s priced appropriately.”

This year’s long-awaited U.K. waste strategy set for the first time important targets to decrease residual waste — “the amount of waste not recycled, reused or composted.” What has been harder, in the U.K. and in Flanders, has been trying to prevent the waste generated in the first place. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

(Sophie Unwin writes for the Ends Report environmental policy journal.)

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