From January 2024, Brussels-Cleanliness Agency will only collect rubbish from flared rigid bins of a maximum 80-litre capacity.
Residents are granted permission to use two: one for white bags and another for the blue ones. However, these will be the only ones to be acceptad by the cleaning teams, alongside the small orange rigid bin for food waste.
The Brussels region justifies the use of rigid bins as a means of combatting the issue of ripped bags, caused by animals searching for food, which leads to litter collection spread on the streets.
Nevertheless, although Brussels-Cleanliness believes that rigid containers pose a solution to the litter created by torn bags, it also highlights that their collection staff – who work manually – are faced with an abundance of varied and bulky rigid bins.
It adds that these bins present a genuine ergonomic challenge and carry potential risks of injury for their staff. Particularly, handling of bins that are too deep or too voluminous requires heavy manipulation, which when repeated several times a day, results in injuries to the Brussels-Cleanliness workforce.
Moreover, Brussels-Cleanliness reasserts that these rigid bins must not be sealed with a lid and that bags of different colours should not be mixed in the same container.
