At 7.30 am, on Quai Léon Monnoyer, the tipper lorries have already begun their dance. At the foot of the incinerator, Brussels shows a less photogenic side, but one that is undoubtedly more revealing of its real challenges.
Helmets on their heads, high-visibility vests on their backs, the Beci team joins Bruxelles-Energie for another Beci Drops By. Off we go to the regional incinerator. Every day, nearly 200 lorries file past this massive industrial structure with its tall chimney, concrete access roads and odours that immediately remind you why the place exists. Not exactly glamorous. Yet almost everything passes through here. The white bin bags from our kitchens, the rubbish bins from shops, street waste, the leftovers of what the city consumes, produces and forgets.
Rubbish, attractiveness, the city’s image, quality of life, energy and public policy… in short, we discussed Brussels alongside several member companies and Audrey Henry, Secretary of State responsible, in particular, for Public Cleanliness and Energy.
The dirty problem of cleanliness
“The cleanest city isn’t the one that’s cleaned the most, but the one that’s made the least mess,” states Frédéric Fontaine, Managing Director of Bruxelles-Propreté, right from the outset. In the capital, cleanliness is often treated as a clean-up operation: we sweep, we collect, we wipe away. As if litter were simply a logistical problem. The Director-General points out that it is, first and foremost, an organisational issue.
Who cleans what? Who issues fines? Who coordinates? Who takes responsibility? Between the municipalities, the Region, the police districts, the stations, shopkeepers and public operators, the answer quickly becomes unclear. On Brussels’ roads, 75 per cent fall under the responsibility of the local authorities. Bruxelles-Propreté operates mainly on the major regional thoroughfares. The result: many stakeholders, and sometimes a lack of clarity.
Beci has been saying this for a long time: as long as governance remains fragmented, keeping the city clean becomes a game of passing the buck. The “clean.brussels” plan has provided a framework for certain measures, but we now need to go further: strengthen coordination, provide the Regional Cleanliness Agency with more resources, and better integrate prevention, monitoring and the issuing of fines.
What the white bag says about us
As you make your way up to the main pit, the sight is impressive. A huge concrete cavity, mountains of white bags, and above it all, that gigantic mechanical claw that grabs the waste like an XXL version of an arcade game. It lifts them, shuffles them about, then sends them towards the incinerators. It’s spectacular… and a bit brutal, especially when you realise that much of what ends up here shouldn’t be there at all. According to Bruxelles-Propreté, nearly 60 per cent of its contents could be sorted differently.
Today, Brussels has a recycling rate of around 45 per cent, with a European target set at 65 per cent by 2035. Although the mandatory sorting of organic waste has already led to a significant improvement since 2023, the Region is still lagging behind, and the battle is unlikely to be won by street sweepers alone.
According to the ABP, this requires smarter tools, such as pilot schemes incorporating artificial intelligence to map areas of litter, adjust collection routes and concentrate resources where they are actually needed. It also involves greater monitoring, prevention and credible enforcement; and, above all, it requires moving away from a system where everyone looks to their neighbour to take responsibility.
What about businesses?!
Waste is not sorted in the same way in a private home, a high-density block of flats, a restaurant or a high street. This is particularly true for businesses. Every business in Brussels is required to enter into a contract with an authorised waste collector. In theory. In practice, there are still plenty of ‘free riders’: commercial waste disposed of via the household waste collection system, bin bags put out at all hours, and pavements turned into back rooms.
For Beci, the answer cannot be purely punitive. Better monitoring is needed, yes, but so is better support: tailoring collections to shopping districts, offering solutions to SMEs without storage space, facilitating access to recycling centres, and making the system clearer.
Energy for the city
At the top of the site, the chimney towers over Brussels. Standing 100 metres tall, it serves as a reminder that what the Region puts in its bins ends up somewhere. Waste is transformed into heat, electricity, reused materials and energy that is fed back into the city. The site already supplies energy to several facilities in Brussels, from the Royal Palace of Laeken to social housing and community facilities. Bottom ash is recycled, metals are recovered, and a biomethanisation project is set to further strengthen this circular approach.
As Audrey Henry pointed out, this approach also resonates with the business world. Turning a constraint into a resource, making better use of what already exists, working within shorter supply chains: here, waste management intersects with the issues of energy, the circular economy and, ultimately, the way Brussels wants to function in the future.
In short, Brussels likes to debate its appeal. It would be wrong to forget that this appeal sometimes starts very low down – at pavement level, at the foot of a white bin bag.
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