- Advertisement -The Hague requires its people to separate plastic waste from other waste, while Leiden folks don’t have to worry about that (they have a fancy system extracting it after collection). Roughly half of Dutch municipal waste gets recycled, keeping the country among the ten EU nations that hit the 50% mark or higher. READ MORE | The easy guide to the Dutch nitrogen crisis, farmers’ protests, and moreAnd the target itself keeps shifting. Image: DepositPhotos.comAll this is true, of course, but the rosy-red (or shall we say, green) fairytale of sustainable Dutch energy is sobered by the fact that Dutch people consume surprisingly little renewable energy themselves. One aspect of life in the Netherlands that has surprised many newcomers lately is the amount of plastic in Dutch grocery stores.