Recycling in the Netherlands?
Where and how can I recycle paper/plactic and glass bottles/batteries/ milk and juice cartons in the Netherlands? I am going to live in a student room/apartment. And how much does it generally cost to deposit a shopping cart? Do I have to prepare the change beforehand? I read a few on wikipedia so please, dont provide me a link there. Thanks for answering. typo : plastic bottle
Netherlands - 2 Answers
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1 :
Most supermarket carts will work on € 0,50 coins, €1.00 coins and some also on €2,00 coins. There are also special cart tokens around, that will work them. If you are in a supermarket without the right coin you can always ask at the reception desk or one of the tills, they will change you money for the right coin. You can recycle glas all over the Netherlands, mostly in big containers in your part of town, often located in the nearest shopping area. There you will often also find a paper container too. Sometimes your town (gemeente reiniging) will collect glass and batteries, as well as paper and green waste, if so, you will get a list with dates once a year. If you do not get that list when you start living in your new house, you can ring the 'gemeente huis', they will send you one or tell you the details. See your (nearest) supermarket for what they accept in recycling, often they have a place to put your batteries, sometimes also for milk jars. The bigger sizes plastic bottles have a deposit system, as do most beer bottles, you mostly return them to the shop you have bought them, or any shop that sells the same brand. Sometimes they also collect the platic bottles that do not have a depostit on them, but not often. But the Netherlands are not great in collecting used plastic and plastified cardboard from milk and juice cartons. Metal is collected with the normal waste and cleaned out before the waste goes into the ovens, (as most waste is burned rather than brought to a dip.)
2 :
The horrendous complications of the recycling system in the Netherlands can be best exemplified by a simple teabag: First, you must remove the tea from the bag, and place that in a compostable rubbish bin, the paper bag should be dried, then recycled in the paper bin. The paper bin is collected according to some arcane schedule derived from the movement of the stars or something, but all dutch people seem to instinctively know when it's paper collection day. I think they learn it at school maybe. The string which is attached to the teabag has to be removed and stored separately. Bizarrely enough, string recycling seems to be handled by the boy scouts, who descend at random, demanding string. The staple which attached the string to the piece of cardboard must be removed, and placed in the metal recycling bin, and finally the card should be separately recycled with the weekly card collection. The byzantine nature of these rules seems to be resolved in practice by dumping everything in a heap of rubbish bags on the street. If you're unsure if you've followed recycling etiquette properly, and are concerned about punishment, the proper thing seems to be to dispose of your rubbish on the next street so no-one can tell where it came from, or dump it outside a fast-food place and blame the foreigners. A proper, less flippant, answer is that you should check with your gemeente (city council) for precise details regarding your local collection and recycling details. The rules vary from city to city, but there's almost always a website which will help (or confuse) you. If you're in student accommodation, there will undoubtedly be some friendly environmentalists on hand to explain the rules, and to insist stridently that you follow them.
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