Prevention and treatment

Environmental solutions

The amount of waste produced each year in the Brussels area (about 350 kg/inhabitant/year), requires the Brussels-Capital Region to find a delicate balance between solutions that are environmentally sound and of wich the removal cost remains financially acceptable.

These solutions comply as best as possible with the Lansink scale, which identifies the various steps required for the optimisation of waste recovery:

  1. Prevention
    • Consuming differently and buying less
    • Repair
  2. Reuse
    • Second hand
    • Recycling
    • Laundry
    • Textile bubbles
  3. Recycling and other recovery
    • Blue, yellow, green and orange bags
    • Glass bins
    • Neighbourhood compost
    • Individual compost
  4. Incineration with energy recovery 
    (In the Brussels region, we go no further than stage 4)
    • White bag
  5. Incineration without energy recovery
  6. Landfill
Lansink scale

The principle of the Lansink scale is to maximise one step before moving on to the next one. Incineration without energy recovery and landfill are not used in the Brussels area because they are too harmful to our environment..

Practical information

Prevention

Preventing waste production means consuming differently. For more information on waste prevention, visit the Brussels Environment website.

Resource and Waste Management Plan

On 22 November 2018 the new Resource and Waste Management Plan (RWMP) was definitively adopted by the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region.
The RWMP’s purpose is to determine the main focuses of the waste management and prevention policy in the Brussels-Capital Region for the period 2019-2023.

Sixty measures have been adopted to reduce the production of waste and increase the reuse and recycling of resources. Click here for full details (FR).

Reuse

Via Recy-K

 

Photo of refurbished computers

Circular and social economy platform, specialized in the reuse, repair and recycling of waste/resources, as well as in training and socio-professional reinsertion.

This project, supported by Bruxelles-Propreté, has benefited from a subvention from the FEDER 2007-2013 Operational Program of the Brussels-Capital Region aiming at “Regional competitiveness and Employment” which is part of the European Union’s cohesion policy; also with a view to entirely renovate the site while abiding by high environmental and eco-construction criteria.

More specifically, the objective of this platform is to specialize in establishing models and processes to define new lines of productions, also integrating :

  • the analysis and characterization of household and professional waste/resources
  • the skimming and preserving collections of household and professional waste/resources
  • the reuse and re-employment of waste/resources
  • the resell of these transformed waste/resources
  • etc.
     

The following activities are also planned for further development:

  • research in the field of eco-design
  • consignment and sale of reusable items
  • training and awareness programmes for school groups and other associations.

As the project leader, Bruxelles-Propreté, has acquired a 6,000 m² building located at rue de Birmingham in Anderlecht.

Sorting and recycling

Bruxelles-Propreté is actively involved in the recycling of paper and cardboard, PMD packaging, glass bottles, jars and phials, garden waste, bulky waste, electrical and electronic waste, construction waste, scrap metals, etc.

In addition, Bruxelles-Propreté collects chemical waste items to make sure that they are removed according to strict rules that are respectful of our environment.

 

Via Recyclis

 

Photo of Recyclis logo

Through Bruxelles-Propreté, the Region is a shareholder in Recyclis, the sorting centre that processes the contents of yellow bags or containers. It can process 80,000 tonnes of paper and cardboard waste. Visit the Recyclis website for more information.

A training and awareness programme for school groups and other associations was developed there in 2012.

 

 

Via the bottle banks

 

Photo of glass bubbles

 

Duplicating bottle banks (white for white glass and coloured for coloured glass) and observing instructions have helped provide recycling centres with high quality glass.

 

 

 

Via the Recypark

 

Photo d'un conteneur de Recypark

Bruxelles-Propreté is always looking for new recycling systems for the waste collected by its teams. For example, since 2011, Bruxelles-Propreté separates flat glass from bulky waste items in its 2 container parks to achieve better recycling.
We also sort wood, metals, gypsum board, PE/PP type hard plastics (buckets, toys, etc.), electrical cables, corks, etc. For more information, check out the pages dedicated to our Recypark (for residents and for professionnals)

 

 

At Bruxelles-Compost

 

Photo of potting soil

The garden waste collected from households, in the container parks (regional and local) and brought by gardening businesses are transformed into compost at the regional composting centre, Visit Bruxelles-Compost website for more informations.

 

 

Incineration with energy recovery

Via Bruxelles-Energie

 

Photo of Bruxelles-Energie

Our residual waste (waste for which there is no recycling programme yet) is processed by Bruxelles-Energie, a plant for energy recovery by incineration. This is a state-of-the-art plant in terms of energy recovery and environmental protection.

Bruxelles-Energie currently provides Electrabel with energy that is used to produce electricity equivalent to the annual needs of more than 65,000 households in Brussels.

A development project for district heating is also considered in order to maximise energy produced by the incineration of your waste. Visit the Bruxelles-Energie's website for more informations.

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