Waste reduction

This page has been automatically translated from French into English by a translation software. Automatic translations are not as accurate as translations made by professional human translators. Nevertheless these pages can help you understand information published by the City of Brussels.

   

Household waste consists of:

• Normal waste collected in the white bags
• The waste such as packagings (blue bags), paper-cardboard (yellow bags) or green waste (green bags)
• Glass
• The waste of parks with containers and regional waste reception centres: bulky waste, waste of electric equipment and electronics, green waste, glass, small chemical waste
• The waste taken back by associations (clothes or objects).

The industrial waste is the waste produced by the various companies. The main producing sectors of waste are the manufacturing industry (36%), construction (36%), offices (20%).

The elimination of waste has a serious impact on the environment. Both the manufacturing of products, and their transport, their collection and their treatment engender CO2 emissions. This has a direct impact on climate change.

Advice

To reduce our production of waste and our impact on the environment, there are some solutions.

Buy smart, choose:

• Products with fewer packagings
• Refills
• Rechargeable batteries
• Recyclable packagings and\or returnable packages
• A shopping bag

Sort out your waste: recycling is one of the means to reduce the quantity of waste. More half of the household waste can be recycled on the condition of sorting out suitably.

Collect corks. Cork is collected from the bark of the cork oak native of Mediterranean regions (Spain, Portugal, Corsica). It is a little renewable raw material. The bark regenerates very slowly, it is necessary to wait approximately 10 years so that the tree reconstitutes a bark which can be used again. Seen the increasing demand of cork, the delay between 2 barkings is often shortened, weakening trees and making them vulnerable to a harmful mushroom in the orchards of cork oak.

The recovery and recycling of the cork must thus be encouraged!

The insulating properties (thermal and acoustic) and fire resistance make the cork into an ideal material in bioconstruction.

What is to be recycled:

• Corks of bottles
• Wall panels
• Earth coverings
• Soles of shoes

Attention: only cork, without metal, plastic, leather or wood.

Where to bring cork? In one of the numerous centres of collection (private individuals, schools, stores, associations) in Brussels. To know their address, contact the Eco-Advice.

Since 1999, the City of Brussels supports the ASBL The small cork, the pioneer of the recovery of corks and other articles in cork in our country.

Links

Brussels Propreté: service of collection and waste treatment of the Brussels Capital-Region.

Bruxelles Environnement: information and advice both for private individuals and professionals on the waste and their management in the Brussels Region.

Section Cleanliness of the website of the City of Brussels