From October onwards, the New Blue Bag is to become a fully integrated feature at the Idelux intermunicipal company. As this is the last intermunicipal company to bring in door-to-door collection of the New Blue Bag, this extension of the sorting rules allows Fost Plus to deploy a uniform sorting message and collection method throughout the country.
From 1 October 2021, Idelux Environnement will join the New Blue Bag system, opening up the way to new sorting rules. From now on, more types of plastic household packaging can be put in the blue bag, such as salad containers, yoghurt pots or butter tubs, to name but a few. The extension of these sorting rules should make it possible to collect up to 8 kg more household waste per person every year.
So it is no longer necessary to keep some types of packaging at home and take them to the recycling park. Henceforth, the new blue bag house-to-house collection service will take care of it. And thanks to the construction of new sorting centres for this household waste, the New Blue Bag is now automatically sorted and recycled into 14 fractions instead of 8, as was previously the case, coming into line with the rest of the country. These new sorting centres, five of which are planned and three already fully operational, are based on new technologies such as optic and densitometric sorting in addition to mechanical sorting. This means that household packaging can now be recycled to produce secondary raw materials, thereby saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions.
The general recycling rate in Belgium in 2020 was 94.9%, and 51% for plastic, which means that the European goal for 2025 has already been attained.
