Could your Herentals school or youth group earn €900 by tackling litter?

Operatie Proper is run by Mooimakers, the Flemish anti-litter partnership involving the Public Waste Agency of Flanders, OVAM, Fost Plus and the Association of Flemish Cities and Municipalities, VVSG. In the Kempen, the programme is supported by participating gemeenten and IOK Afvalbeheer, the intermunicipal organisation responsible for waste services in and around Herentals.

According to Mooimakers, participating schools and youth groups build an action plan from compulsory and optional measures. These can include regularly clearing litter around a school, clubhouse or public route; improving waste sorting; reducing disposable packaging; introducing reusable materials; teaching pupils about waste; and agreeing internal rules for staff, members or leaders. OVAM stresses that the programme is intended to change routine behaviour, rather than treat children and teenagers as a temporary municipal cleaning crew.

The size of the reward depends on the selected and completed measures. Mooimakers gives a range of €225 to €900, with the precise amount established when the plan is approved. New participants generally face a more extensive set of required actions than groups that have already completed an earlier cycle. The local authority reviews plans and reports, pays successful participants and subsequently claims reimbursement through Mooimakers.

For the 2025-2026 cycle, registration ran from 16 August to 31 October 2025, Mooimakers says. Those dates should not be treated as permanent: a Herentals school or vereniging considering a later school year should consult the Operatie Proper website or contact the city’s environmental service and IOK Afvalbeheer for the current window. The platform and most local guidance are in Dutch. International parents or volunteers can ask the school’s environmental coordinator, directie or youth-group leiding to handle the formal submission; Herentals is a Dutch-speaking gemeente, so there is no parallel French municipal procedure.

Participation continues after registration. The organisation must carry out the approved measures and upload the requested proof, which may include photographs, internal agreements, lesson records or reports of clean-up activities. Mooimakers’s guidance for local authorities says payment follows only after the final reporting has been accepted. Groups should therefore appoint one responsible adult, retain parental consent where identifiable children appear in photographs and check what evidence is required for each action before starting.

The reward is best understood as support for organisational change, not an hourly wage for young litter-pickers. Guidance published by other participating Flemish municipalities says the money is intended to flow back into the school or association, preferably through measures that make its activities cleaner, less waste-intensive or more sustainable. Examples might include reusable drinking cups, better sorting stations or durable equipment, although each organisation should confirm locally whether any spending conditions apply.

Herentals is joining an established Flemish system rather than designing an isolated cash-for-cleaning scheme. Mooimakers recorded 1,325 action plans for the 2025-2026 school year: 1,029 from schools and 296 from youth associations. A regional report circulated in the Kempen said more than 140 schools and youth groups in the area had participated in the preceding cycle, receiving a combined €102,000 in rewards. Those figures show that the model is already familiar to many local administrations and education networks.

Litter remains expensive and difficult to address because responsibility is divided among consumers, producers and public authorities. OVAM reported that Flemish local authorities collected 6,969 tonnes of litter in 2024, 5.3% more than in 2023, while cautioning that two annual measurements are insufficient to establish a lasting trend. Volunteers nevertheless removed 17.2% of the 6,621 tonnes reported in 2023, underlining both the value of civic participation and the risk of depending too heavily on unpaid effort.

That tension produces two legitimate readings of Operatie Proper. Schools, youth movements and local authorities can see it as environmental education with a visible neighbourhood benefit: children learn prevention and sorting while earning resources for their own organisation. Parents, teachers and youth leaders may reasonably ask whether the reporting burden is proportionate, or whether public-space cleaning should remain primarily a municipal and producer responsibility. The programme’s broader design partly answers that concern by including waste prevention, infrastructure and education alongside collection.

Flanders is also changing how litter costs are distributed. OVAM says an interregional framework implementing elements of the European rules on single-use plastics will make producers of items commonly found as litter contribute to public clean-up costs. The agency estimates Flemish litter-related costs at €164 million based on 2021 data, with roughly €61 million a year expected through the producer-financed arrangement for Flemish municipalities. Youth participation therefore sits inside a wider policy that also includes prevention, street-bin management, enforcement and producer responsibility.

For residents, the immediate effect will be local and modest: cleaner routes around schools, club premises and meeting places, plus greater awareness of how rubbish enters streets and waterways. The strongest result would be less waste created in the first place. Herentals and IOK will need to communicate the next registration period, identify participating organisations and explain how completed plans will be assessed. Until those details are published for the next cycle, interested groups can review the Dutch-language Operatie Proper materials, nominate a coordinator and map the litter and waste problems around their own site.