The 70 participants of PlastiCity The Hague that started separating plastic since July and August collected enough plastic to fill two shipping containers (67.3 m³ each) with plastic. That's about 850 kilos of plastic per container. The transport of the collected plastic business waste to the container couldn’t be done more Dutch: by bike.

Entrepreneur Hein Philipse from Beachclub Culpepper in The Hague is one of this year’s Dutch participants in the PlastiCity project. “Thanks to PlastiCity, we achieve our sustainable ambitions whilst participating is for free”, Hein says. For Hein, doing sustainable business as well as living sustainable is a logical choice. “If you simply see the amount of waste we produce at our beach pavilion, it will eventually make you act more sustainable”, Hein says.

Since Hein participated in PlastiCity last July, Marcel Kleizen picks up his plastic waste as well as from the other participating waste owners. Marcel uses an electric Resource bike to bring their plastic to the shipping container stored at an industrial site in the city. When full, the shipping container is sent to Ghent by truck for further processing in the mobile recycling lab.

Challenging
Both Marcel and Hein point out it’s not easy to separate two kinds of plastic waste streams. Marcel: “But most participants don’t want to see this valuable material being burned.” To separate their plastic waste, all partnering entrepreneurs receive white and blue bags. Transparent plastic films without any stickers are collected in the white bag. Clean hard plastics, like the sauce buckets, belong in the blue bag. “About two-thirds of the collected plastics are hard plastics.”

Marcel: “Also, we ask participants to remove all stickers from plastic films. This can be hard to do in practice, mostly for restaurants that have little space in their kitchens with personnel that works under time pressure.” Hein adds: “Besides, you have to make sure to store all the waste correctly and that all personnel is well instructed”. More time consuming, but according to Hein it’s worth the effort. “It’s great that the city of The Hague facilitates waste separation. I advised the neighboring beach pavilion to participate in the PlastiCity project as well!”

Motivated participants
Marcel is positively surprised by the willingness of all the participating waste holding organizations. “I’m very proud of all of them. It’s wonderful to see such a variety of business participating. Big and small, but also from different industries. For example, a hospital, flower shop, the entrepreneurial development bank, construction companies, event organizers, hotels and an indoor bouldering location.”

Culpepper is willing to take their effort even one step further. Hein explains: “We try to reduce the amount of plastics during our purchasing. And our terrace is almost plastic free. The single use plastics that we still use, like sauce buckets and (meat) packaging, is now processed by PlastiCity. That’s how we become even more sustainable!”

New products
The collected plastic of Hein and other entrepreneurs in The Hague is brought to a shipping container by PlastiCity’s electric Resource bike until December 2021. Marcel: “Our second container was filled up by the end of October!”. Once a container is full, the plastic is brought to Ghent by truck to be processed into raw material for new plastics. Participants of PlastiCity will receive new plastic products made of their own plastic waste streams in the near future. In December 2021 or January 2022, PlastiCity The Hague will organize a design workshop to generate the first ideas for these products. For example, last year the project managed to design and produce face shields out of fully recycled PET.

Are you interested in participating in the design workshops, or do have any other questions or comments? Please contact PlastiCity The Hague via mail: plasticity@denhaag.nl, or have a look at our local webpage.