Started your spring cleaning? That includes a trip to the environmental park. Load up your bulky waste, old paper, and white goods, and off you go. Now that 2 are closing (Delfshaven and Hillegersberg-Schiebroek) and 1 is opening (Overschie), there will soon be 6 environmental parks in the entire municipality. However, it wasnt long ago that there were no environmental parks in Rotterdam at all.
On Saturday, March 29, the environmental parks in Delfshaven and Hillegersberg-Schiebroek will close permanently. Where the environmental park at Keilezijweg is now, houses of the Merwehaven district will be built in the future.
At the environmental park on Melanchtonweg, the tree bank will be established. Trees that have been removed for work can be replanted there. The tree bank is currently located at ir. P. Kosterweg. There, it will make way for homes in Nieuw-Kralingen.
The barrier at the Delfshaven environmental park will go up for the last time on Saturday, March 29. After the weekend, the environmental park will close. Photo: Rhalda Jansen
The HER
Where one environmental park closes, another opens. On Tuesday, April 1, Milieupark + De HER opens at Bovendijk in Overschie. The environmental park is spaciously designed to ensure that waste can be separated even better.
The HER is a circular center on the environmental park site. Entrepreneurs recycle discarded items and materials for new products. One persons waste is anothers livelihood.
Entrepreneurs at De HER will reuse discarded items for new products. Photo: Jan van der Meijde
Only in the nineties
It seems hard to imagine, but environmental parks havent been around for that long. In the 1990s, a law was passed that every municipality in the Netherlands must have such a park. Before that, the municipality collected bulky waste with (freight) trucks. That still happens, by the way.
However, at an environmental park, you can separate waste on-site, and municipal workers tell you which material goes in which container. An environmental park is a place where citizens can separate and deposit household bulky waste that doesnt fit or isnt allowed in the trash can. Think mattresses, paint cans, clothing, and garden waste.
Melanchton or Charlois?
The archives dont agree on which environmental park in Rotterdam was the first.
Officially, its the Hillegersberg-Schiebroek environmental park, one of the 2 parks that will close. That location opened on June 26, 1998. According to an online archive of Roteb, that was the first environmental park, and 3 more parks opened in 3 years. After a year and a half, the 100,000th visitor came to a Rotterdam environmental park.
Whoever searches the online newspaper archive Delpher sees a different date and location. Old newspapers show that Roteb opened the first environmental park on September 28, 1990, in Charlois. There were 6 containers: for clear glass, colored glass, cans, textiles, paper, and plastic.
Biobins
In 1990, the municipality also started a pilot with biobins. Rotterdammers could deposit their green, fruit, and garden waste (GFT waste) in them. For the start of the experiment, alderman Piet Hoogendoorn rode with a scrap dealer (in a carriage with a horse) through Hoogvliet to collect GFT waste. No, this wasnt 1900 but 1990.
The trial with the biobins in 1990 started with a test ride of the scrap dealer and the alderman on the carriage. Source: Delpher / Het Vrije Volk
Scrap dealer to circular
Whether the first environmental park opened in 1998 or 1990: the environmental park isnt that old. The example of the scrap dealer shows how quickly the approach to waste has changed.
The municipality wants to reuse more and more waste. The HER, at the environmental park in Overschie, is an example of this. With it, the municipality is working towards a world without waste.