Brussels Environment

Tackling bulky-waste dumping in high-density housing

Waste Research Behavioural design Citizens Belgium

The Challenge

In Brussels’ vertical housing, bulky items too often pile up in shared spaces and illegal dumps. Communal areas, anonymity, cramped flats and confusing rules make the right disposal channels hard to use. Building on Citizen Waste 1.0, Brussels Environment wanted to understand why, and to equip both residents and on-site managers to handle bulky waste better.

Our Approach

With Comase, we ran a three-phase, evidence-based study: a review of 50+ scientific and operational sources, a survey of 350+ residents, 26 interviews with managers, field agents and institutions, and on-site building visits. Reading the barriers through behaviour-change levers, we then co-created 45 concrete interventions spanning communication, service, infrastructure and regulation, each with an operational matrix.

The Result

We gave Brussels Environment a clear diagnosis and a ready-to-use toolkit: five priority behaviours and 45 actionable interventions, from visual sorting checklists to redesigned Recypark reception. Above all, we reframed the problem: dumping is rarely mere incivility, it is often missing local infrastructure and hidden barriers, so the answer is to make the right choice easy, not to demand more goodwill.