Residents of Coevorden have to divorce more often. Their waste in particular. With this message, the municipality of Coevorden will soon start an extensive public campaign. The aim is that the average amount of residual waste per resident in this municipality will be significantly reduced in the coming years.
Because the municipality says it still has a lot of work to do in this regard. An agreement was previously made that a maximum of one hundred kilos of residual waste per resident of Coevorden will be returned from the year 2028. Last year, the average quantity was 160 kilos per inhabitant, with an average of 140 kilos per inhabitant ending up in the gray bin and an average of 20 kilos per inhabitant being handed in to the recycling center.
That is still sixty kilos too much residual waste, per inhabitant. The municipality says it has already taken steps in recent years to motivate residents to reduce their amount of residual waste, but given the pace of the reduction that has now been achieved, it needs to be stepped up: in 2019 there was an average of 177 kilos of residual waste. per inhabitant, in 2020 this was 172 kilos and in 2021 the average was 169 kilos.
“At the end of this year we will therefore release plans to take additional steps and reduce the amount of residual waste more quickly,” says spokesperson René Nanninga of the municipality of Coevorden.
Nanninga cannot yet say what concrete measures the municipality wants to take for this. “This will become apparent when concrete proposals and measures from the previously adopted policy plan ‘Waste and Raw Materials 2023-2027’ are submitted to the municipal council.”
According to him, one possibility is that residents are financially rewarded in a certain way if they offer less residual waste. Consider a system such as DiFtar, where residents pay a certain amount each time the gray wheelie bin is on the road. “We see that this system works in municipalities around us and that it saves kilos of residual waste,” says Nanninga.
What Coevorden also wants to do is make the collection of other forms of waste – especially plastic, metal and beverage cartons – easier. “For example, by creating more underground containers.” According to the municipality, these types of proposals will also be included in the new waste plan. It is expected that detailed measures from the policy plan will be submitted to the municipal council at the end of this year.