Recycle more to bury less
Today, 501,000 tonnes of “ultimate” waste are still buried in these landfills each year (73% in Charleroi, 23% in Oupeye and 4% in Habay). It is this flow that must absolutely be slowed down, judges Minister Coppieters. Otherwise, he says, “the costs linked to the transport of waste and, therefore, the costs linked to the elimination of final waste will gradually increase with the saturation of CET”.
Embuild, the construction federation, has already sounded the alarm in the past because Wallonia is already no longer able to absorb all the construction waste from all companies (the intercommunal companies give priority to that of their zone) which requires sending some to Flanders. Until the north of the country says no or increases taxes…
In addition to final household waste and that from construction which is not recycled, certain excavated soil is also buried in CET. These are “certain contaminated lands which have specific characteristics such that it is impossible to decontaminate them”, indicated the minister in the Environment Committee. Between 2018 and 2023, this represented between 10 and 20% of the total waste sent to landfill.
Opening new landfills being neither popular nor really in keeping with the times, it will absolutely be necessary to develop alternatives. This will involve the deployment of a “true circular economy”.
Make, consume, throw away: the end of a cycle
We are working on it, they say at Pierre-Yves Jeholet. The Walloon Minister of the Economy is expected to present this year the future strategic axes of the Circular Wallonia program, which aims in particular to reduce waste and promote reuse and recycling.
-However, we are not starting from scratch. Under the previous legislature, the government had already included 10 ambitions, 60 measures and 6 promising sectors in the Circular Wallonia strategy. This particularly concerned construction, plastics, metallurgy, textiles and food.
A concrete example already applied? Mandatory recovery, since 2021, of used mattresses. With the objective of recovering 80% in 2030 with a recycling rate of 75% by the same deadline. A detail? Not so much: these mattresses which represent 6,500 tonnes of waste each year, or 5% of the bulky waste flow, a good part of which ends up in landfill.
Wallonia also remains attentive to various circular economy projects, particularly with materials such as glass wool or plaster, while the construction sector itself is active in reducing its quantity. of waste products or find outlets for them rather than putting them at the bottom of a hole.
Since January 1, all second-hand clothes go into textile bubbles: “A new slap in the face for the social economy”
