Starting this month, there will be a deposit on cans! But it will still take a few months before we will notice the effect of this measure. First, all the ‘old’ cans have to be sold before cans with the deposit symbol will be available. But, the change has been made! We at Ecoras are very happy with this, because by 2021 an estimated 150 million cans will have ended up in nature. Introducing deposits will reduce this number significantly. Especially consideirng that deposits on small plastic bottles have reduced their litter by 50%! Hopefully the same will happen with cans and we will soon find fewer cans in litter. According to Milieu Centraal, it takes more than 50 years for an aluminum can to break down in nature. Besides polluting nature, cans are also dangerous for animals. In fact, the cans often end up in mowers and these sharp particles can injure animals. If cans are soon going to be sold with a deposit, hopefully we will notice this at our No Waste Work Walks. Because, as you can see from this graph, we found especially large numbers of cans in February. Unfortunately, also a large volume of Styrofoam (lots of small pieces), plastic wrap and hard plastic. It was also striking that not many plastic bottles were found! That gives good hope for the cans when the deposit goes into effect soon.
Grafiek van het verzamelde zwerfafval tijdens No Waste Work Walk in februari 2023.
No Waste Work Walk: the experiment is now a habit
What began as a fun experiment has now become a habit. Last November, we planned to spend a month cleaning up litter in our business park. We were surprised by the amount of litter and by the fact that there were clearly hotspots with a noticeable amount of litter. So in February we spent another month cleaning up litter. There was visibly less litter because, of course, we had cleaned up thoroughly 3 months before. On March 15 we received massive help namely from 40 people from 16 companies in our business park, this as part of the National Cleanup Day. We still found a lot of litter, again at the same hotspots. Lots of cans, fireworks, plastic wrap and hard plastic. We are extremely curious to see if we will also find fewer cans in the near future.