The Brussels canal is full of waste, with Colruyt’s brands again making up the largest part

The Brussels canal is heavily polluted, with Colruyt’s brands again topping the list

After a large-scale study of 9,000 items retrieved from the Brussels canal, Colruyt’s own-brand products once again turned out to be the most common source of pollution. The top three is completed by Cristaline (Alma) and The Coca-Cola Company, making this the fourth year in a row that the same three companies are the biggest polluters. The items found most often are plastic bottles and cans, a persistent problem for which there is actually a simple and most efficient solution: a deposit-return system.

For six years now, City to Ocean has been collecting waste from the Brussels canal by kayak. Each year, for two months, we analyse all the waste collected, identifying the producer and the type of item, in short, a Brand Audit. Pollution from packaging waste has now reached dramatic proportions and affects all forms of life on Earth. Brand Audits, which are carried out worldwide, highlight producer responsibility as well as the structural causes of pollution, namely the production of unmanageable amounts of single-use packaging. These audits also provide better insight into the types of items that cause pollution, allowing targeted measures to be taken to stop it.

Colruyt took first place with its brands Everyday (123 items), Carapils (109 items) and Boni (37 items). Alma followed with its water brands Cristaline (230 items), Louise (18 items) and Saint-Amand (2 items). The Coca-Cola Company appeared next with brands such as Coca-Cola (92 items), Fanta (28 items) and Chaudfontaine (12 items). And fourth place goes to PepsiCo, which moves up one place compared to 2024, with brands including Lay’s (94 items), Doritos (27 items) and Lipton Tea (27 items).

Supermarkets perpetuate the problem

Supermarkets have a unique position in the consumption chain between the customer and the producer: they can either keep the waste problem going or implement solutions. This is also shown by BreakFreeFromPlastic through their Supermarket Audit. Supermarkets like Colruyt, which sell many own brands in addition to other brands, have twice as much potential to tackle the waste problem instead of making it worse.

With Colruyt, Lidl, Aldi and Delhaize, four supermarkets with their own brands appear in the top 20 of our brand audit. On top of that, we must consider that a very large portion of the waste from other brands retrieved from the canal was also purchased at these same supermarkets.

Supermarkets perpetuate the problem by:

opposing the introduction of a deposit system on cans and plastic bottles, with Colruyt as one of the biggest obstacles
selling almost all products in single-use packaging
adding extra packaging to create multipacks, with Colruyt as the biggest user
not offering dry foods in bulk
continuing to sell part of their fruit and vegetables pre-packaged
not providing counters where customers can buy the quantities they choose
not encouraging customers to use their own containers

This is despite the fact that 3 out of 4 Belgians want to buy products with as little packaging as possible, and a new study shows that plastic pollution could be stopped within 15 years through deposit-return systems and reuse. BreakFreeFromPlastic’s Supermarket Audit also shows that supermarkets worldwide only address the problems above when legislation forces them to do so, voluntary actions are almost non-existent.

Biggest companies pollute worldwide

With The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, two of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies are in the top 4. Both companies are repeatedly identified worldwide as the largest polluters in brand audits and are among the biggest customers of fossil-fuel-based plastic producers. It is clear that the amount of plastic a company uses is linked to the amount of its plastic found in the environment.

Just like supermarkets, these companies are structurally responsible for the massive pollution we see in our streets, waterways, and oceans. And instead of contributing to solutions, we observe (just as with supermarkets) that they do the opposite. At the end of 2024, Coca-Cola quietly abandoned its previously stated goal to sell 25% of its products in reusable packaging by 2030. In early November this year, it was even revealed that Coca-Cola actually used 10% more virgin plastics over the past year instead of reducing them. PepsiCo did the exact same thing: in May this year, they announced that they would drop their target to use 20% reusable packaging by 2030, along with lowering their goals to reduce virgin plastics and increase recycled plastic use.

It is therefore not surprising that the current amount of plastic produced annually (450 million tons) is predicted to double by 2040 and triple by 2050. Meanwhile, plastic not only causes environmental pollution but also significantly contributes to climate change, is found in human blood, lungs, and placentas, causes various diseases in humans, harms biodiversity, and overwhelms waste management systems worldwide.

Most retrieved items

Clearly in first and second place are plastic bottles (732 items) and cans (467 items). When we add the labels from plastic bottles (268 items), the caps (118 items), and the plastic packaging used to bundle cans and bottles together (41 items), this accounts for as much as 20% of all the analyzed waste. An immense amount of beverage packaging waste, some of which breaks down into microplastics in nature, flows through the canal toward the sea, and could have been avoided years ago.

The Belgian political landscape has been debating the introduction of a deposit-return system for years, and environmental movements have been advocating for it just as long, but it has yet to become reality due to strong resistance from industry. Meanwhile, many neighboring countries have implemented deposit systems, and a country like Germany succeeds in separately collecting 97% of cans and plastic bottles, a return rate Belgium can only dream of.

The top 5 is completed by food packaging (432 items), non-food packaging (421 items), and polystyrene (403 items).

We also observed that:

The vast majority of the items retrieved are single-use
76% of items from the top three companies are beverage containers
64% of all plastic water bottles are water bottles, of which 54% are Cristaline
49% of all cans are beer cans, followed by soft drinks (31%) and energy drinks (20%)
47% of smoking-related items are lighters
Plastic cups (235 items, ranked 10th) and paper cups (88 items, ranked 16th) are very common
Drink pouches such as Capri-Sun (153 items) are still non-recyclable and easily end up in the environment

Our demands for supermarkets, producers, and the government

Everyone is annoyed by the waste we encounter daily in the streets and in nature, and that’s nothing compared to the damage it causes. If we want to turn the tide, action must be taken. These are our demands for supermarkets, producers, and the government:

All of the following business practices should become standard in supermarkets:

Deposit-return systems for cans and plastic bottles
Dry foods sold in bulk
The possibility to bring your own containers
Counters (butcher, bakery, etc.) where customers can buy the quantities they choose
Products in reusable packaging with the infrastructure to return the packaging
No more double packaging

Producers must:

Switch to reusable packaging
Disclose their plastic use and reduce it ambitiously

Supermarkets and producers must:

Stop advertising drinks in single-use packaging
Stop misleading advertising claiming recycling is the solution

The government must:

Enforce all of these positive measures through legislation, since voluntary actions won’t happen
Promote and facilitate tap water consumption on a large scale, with multiple fountains in public spaces. This, together with an increase in VAT on water in plastic bottles, as France will implement in 2026, raising VAT from 5.5% to 20% on water and soft drinks in single-use packaging.

Consumers who want to generate less waste today have to fight the system every day. The measures above are urgently needed to reduce this, to combat climate change, to protect human health, biodiversity, the well-being of communities, and to keep the Brussels canal clean.

If no action is taken, plastic production will increase twice as fast as waste management capacity, and plastic pollution will double over the next 15 years to 280 million tons per year, the equivalent of dumping one truckload of plastic every second. Who would dare explain something like this to their children while also they can see that pollution has already reached dramatic levels today?