City to Ocean will NOT cleanup waste on World Cleanup Day: 'the real impact lies with industry and government.

All year round, City to Ocean cleans up waste in the water and along the quays. Saturday 20 September , on World Cleanup Day, we didn’t cleanup up for once. We still took to the water with our kayaks, but with our trash bins turned upside down and fishing nets in the air. With this action, we want to make it clear that it is mainly the government and companies that can turn the tide with real solutions, while World Cleanup Day emphasizes cleanups and citizens.

On World Cleanup Day people around the world roll up their sleeves to clean up waste, and a cleanup took also place at our quay, organized by another organization. While cleanup actions are very important for raising awareness, they only address the symptoms. Since the founding of City to Ocean five years ago, we are still finding just as much waste in the Brussels Canal today. And if no systemic change takes place, this will continue—and even get worse.

Treating the symptoms and a drop in the ocean

Assuming that the average cleanup action on World Cleanup Day lasts two hours, a lot of waste will be collected. However, at the same time, a company like Coca-Cola produced 25 million single-use plastic bottles worldwide (source), 10 billion cigarette ended up in nature (source), and 2,500 tons of plastic flowed into the oceans. In other words, cleanups are just a drop in the ocean, and we cannot rely on them alone.

Without real solutions, by 2040 the annual flow of plastic into the oceans will nearly triple to 29 million tons (source). It is not the lack of technical solutions that prevents tackling the waste problem, but rather insufficient legislation, unsuitable business models, and flawed financing mechanisms.

So what needs to be done?

Despite Belgium’s efficient waste management infrastructure, we still face a major litter problem. The system needs to be adjusted:

  • The government must introduce a deposit system for cans and plastic bottles.
  • Legislation must set limits and reduction targets on the amount of plastic that can be produced each year.
  • Producers and supermarkets must switch to fewer single-use packaging items instead of more.
  • There should be a ban on outdoor advertising for products in single-use packaging.
  • Plastic filters in cigarettes must be banned.
  • Belgium must commit to an ambitious agreement in the next UN Plastics Treaty negotiations.

Hence our call to the various governments and companies in Belgium: tackle the waste problem for real, with real solutions, and stop the flow of waste into nature and the oceans.