This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Refuse collectors in the Netherlands are being followed by close protection officers after getting the power to issue red and yellow cards to force householders to properly recycle.



The new football-style card system has led to a series of rubbish rage incidents in the south of the country, with collectors threatened, abused and one bin lorry hemmed in to a street by furious householders who had not had their waste taken away.

The Netherlands has been a pioneer in household recycling with some municipalities charging for the collection of bin bags which contain non-recyclable rubbish, and asking householders to separate refuse into up to seven different categories.

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However officers known as the buitengewoon opsporingsambtenaar (BOA), who are not police but have the power to arrest suspects and issue fines, had to be brought in to protect the refuse collectors of Best, a town near Eindhoven, after they became responsible for not only collecting the rubbish but inspecting it and dishing out cards to recalcitrant households.

Yellow cards are issued to warn people if they have wrongly separated their waste. Red cards are given to repeat offenders, and their rubbish is left to rot on the side of the road, leading to angry confrontations.

The mayor of Best, Hans Ubachs, said: “A garbage man was told: I know where your children go to school. That is unacceptable.

“They must stay away from our people, and also from the people who work for us. Residents are not allowed to bother these men in their work, threaten them verbally or swear at them. Fortunately, no physical violence has yet been used.

“The uniform of the BOA radiates authority. We continue with it until the garbage collectors feel safe again.”

The municipality has accepted that it needs to communicate better about its five different categories of waste.

Ad van den Berk, a BOA officer currently employed to protect the refuse collectors, told De Volkskrant newspaper: ‘‘It’s pretty bad that it has to be like this. But you do it for the safety of those garbage men.

“If a red card is hung on the tray and it is not emptied, some people get angry and start cursing.

“But if they see a BOA, then the verbal aggression dissolves. Then I explain why the bin is not being emptied and I give them a green information leaflet.”

The Dutch ministry of internal affairs spent almost €40m (£35m) between 2006 and 2016 on combating aggression and violence against the providers of public services.