The deposit will start on July 1, 2021.
According to Van Veldhoven, it’s urgently needed in the fight against litter where previous attempts have failed.
On plastic bottles more than 1 liter, the deposit remains as it is now: 25 cents.
Cans may also receive a deposit a year later, but the sector will first have the opportunity to tackle the litter problem.
If that doesn’t work, a deposit will be issued in mid-2022.
That is also a wish of the House of Representatives who is afraid that after the plastic bottle deposit, manufacturers switch to cans which then end up in nature.
Deposits encourage reuse
Around 900 million small plastic bottles are sold every year.
100 million of them end up in the environment.
Van Veldhoven has been working with the packaging industry for some time now to reduce litter and plastic in the environment.
However, the industry has not been able to reuse 90 percent of the disposable bottles.
According to the State Secretary, a deposit is a proven method to encourage reuse.
Handing in will soon be possible in supermarkets, petrol stations and train stations and via caterers.
The scheme had been in the air for a while.
Two years ago, Van Veldhoven issued an ultimatum: the packaging industry had to reduce litter by 70 to 90 percent otherwise they would implement a deposit on small plastic bottles from 2021 onwards.
A report by Rijkswaterstaat that Van Veldhoven sent to the House of Representatives earlier this month showed that this target will not be met.
The report states that last year 7 percent more small plastic bottles were found in litter than in 2016 and 2017.
In total, the amount of litter increased by 21 percent compared to those years.
It is also striking that in 2018 there was a decrease in abandoned plastic bottles and other litter.
Environmental organizations have been lobbying for the scheme for years.
More and more municipalities are also in favor: with a more extensive deposit scheme, the responsibility for collecting and reusing small plastic bottles lies with producers.
Producers, in turn, have always opposed the extension of the deposit.
According to the packaging companies, the system is too expensive and yields too little.
Supermarkets are also not eager for more deposit bottles, the processing of which costs them extra time and money.
“It is quite complicated and an entire organization to collect all those bottles later,” a spokesman for Albert Heijn told Nieuwsuur last year.
For a moment, the packaging companies and supermarkets seemed to be pulling the longest.
The first two cabinets of Prime Minister Rutte even wanted to completely get rid of the deposit.
But that was canceled because the packaging industry didn’t respect their agreements.
The deposit scheme is now being expanded.
But the last word has not yet been said about cans.
REFS
Published on
Vanaf volgend jaar statiegeld op kleine plastic flesjes, later mogelijk ook op blik