The right choices for a sustainable future
The operating budget of Fost Plus in 2023 was 298.457.881 euro. Most of this budget is allocated to collection and sorting of household packaging. These are all the costs involved in moving materials from people’s homes to our recycling partners.
Collection and sorting costs rise sharply
Examples of these costs include door-to-door collection of PMD and paper/cardboard or maintenance and emptying of bottle banks. PMD sorting centres also receive payment for their activities. We also pay fees for packaging materials collected through the recycling park, such as Household Hazardous Waste, cork or expanded polystyrene, to the intermunicipal or local authority operating the recycling park.
In practice, most of these activities are carried out by intermunicipal companies or private waste companies, but they are financed by Fost Plus under long-term contracts. Collection and sorting costs have risen sharply in recent years due to high inflation. We also work alongside municipalities and intermunicipal companies to invest in projects to improve services for the public, including alternative collection systems and changes in collection frequencies.
Companies pay via Green Dot contribution
The cost of our operations is funded by our members through the Green Dot contribution. Each year, companies that bring packaging to the market report to Fost Plus exactly how much packaging they have sold and what materials were used in it. Every material has a specific rate, based on the actual related costs in the budget. The more recyclable a material is, the lower the rate will be, and vice versa.
Income from materials falls
We do also receive income from the sale of materials. Materials that already have a fully functioning market for recycling and sales, such as aluminium and transparent PET bottles, are in strong demand and consequently those have a relatively high positive value. For other materials, such as flexible packaging or mixed hard plastics, the recycling market is still developing and opportunities to sell the products are rather limited. Consequently, Fost Plus does not receive high prices for these materials and in some cases the recycling company actually has to be paid to process them. However, this is all part of our members’ commitment to a sustainable future.
In addition, materials prices are subject to the laws of supply and demand. It is a global market: the prices paid for recycled materials are linked to general raw material prices, which can be very volatile. Although the demand for recycled materials is continuing to grow, in practice this does not always lead to rising prices for these materials. On the contrary, we have seen a sharp decline in recent years.
Investing for the long term
Due to all these factors, our members’ Green Dot contributions have increased significantly in recent years. We help them to make the right choices for the future by guiding them towards recyclable alternatives – with lower Green Dot fees. In other words, investing in sustainability pays off. At the same time, we are still committed to anchoring our recycling capacity within our local region. This will allow us to ensure that Belgian packaging recycling is sustainable, even in a volatile international context.