# Your share of the 6.5 kt that leaks to the environment

Navarre et al. (2022) traced 296 kt of Dutch food packaging through the recycling and disposal system. 6.5 kt escape the system each year — mostly reaching marine ecosystems via rivers, but also accumulating on Dutch riverbanks, beaches, and soil, and on land overseas. Divide by 17.5 million Dutch residents and your share is ≈ 0.37 kg per year — the default starting point below. Move the four sliders to describe your own habits relative to that average.

#### Cascade model

Food-packaging cascade
Consumption — relative to average × 1.00 1.0× = 16.9 kg/yr food packaging (Navarre 296 kt ÷ 17.5M Dutch). Floor of 0.10× ≈ 1.7 kg/yr — the unavoidable minimum (medication blister packs, sealed electronics, etc.)
Reduced / replaced 0.00 Bulk shopping, refills, reusables. Not in L/N — user choice.
Recycling rate 0.33 Derived from Navarre 2022's flow totals: ~33% enters the recycling stream, of which ~39% is exported out of the EU.
Litter rate — relative to average × 1.00 1.0× = 2% of consumed packaging dropped as litter. 75% recaptured by street cleaning; 25% reaches marine.
Your share of plastic that escapes the system
0.37 kg/yr
Two leak pathways — calibrated to Navarre's 78 / 22 split
Foreign mismanagement after export 0.29 kg
Domestic litter 0.08 kg
Default sliders reproduce Navarre's national split (75% Asia + 3% other = 78% via exports, 22% via Dutch litter). Try moving sorting rate down to 0.05 — the export share collapses and total leakage falls. The model demonstrates the paradox: more recycling means more leakage abroad, not less.
Your degree of responsibility — three framings
The 0.37 kg/yr above is your contribution. Responsibility is a different question. The causal frameworks assign you very different weights depending on what we mean by "your fault."
1.00
Token-level cause
Halpern & Pearl, 2005
For your individual waste, you are the sole but-for cause — nobody else's behaviour produced your share.
5.7×10−8
Chockler & Halpern, 2004
For the national 6.5 kt harm, the minimum coalition that flips the outcome is ∼17.5M Dutch consumers. dr = 1/(K+1) ≈ 1/17.5M per agent — the harm is massively overdetermined.
0.27 kg/yr
Avoidable footprint
Gap between your current 0.37 kg/yr and the floor a zero-waste consumer reaches (0.10 kg/yr). This is the harm you can prevent given what you now know.
The tension. The token framing assigns you full ownership of your 0.37 kg. The degree of responsibility framing says you are one of millions and your marginal effect on the 6.5 kt is vanishing. Both are correct — they answer different questions. The avoidable footprint is the bridge: it is the part of your share that depends on your choices, and which therefore tracks your moral position rather than your accidental position in the population.

##### Direct from Navarre (2022) and the literature it builds on

- 296 kt/yr Dutch food packaging stream (range 283–310 kt/yr) — Navarre 2022
- 6.5 kt/yr reaches the marine environment (range 2.8–13.5 kt/yr) — Navarre 2022
- Fate of 296 kt: 198.4 kt incinerated (67%), 57.6 kt recycled or disposed in EU (19.5%), 37.2 kt exported out of EU (12.6%), 1.4 kt uncovered litter — Navarre 2022
- Routing of marine leakage: 75% via Asia exports + 3% via other-nation exports (= 78% out-of-EU exports), 22% via domestic litter — Navarre 2022

##### Extrapolated or simplified by this model — not in Navarre directly

- Per-capita default C = 16.9 kg/yr — Navarre's 296 kt ÷ ~17.5M Dutch population. The per-capita framing is a modelling choice; Navarre reports national totals.
- Per-capita target 0.37 kg/yr — same division applied to Navarre's 6.5 kt national leakage. Range from Navarre's 2.8–13.5 kt: roughly 0.16–0.77 kg/yr per capita.
- Leakage rate flattened to a scalar. Navarre's leak rate is a per-destination vector; the model collapses it to a single number weighted by 2019 export volumes. Moving the slider therefore extrapolates along this aggregate slope rather than along Navarre's per-country vector — the further from default, the looser the calibration.
- Within-EU exports folded into "Recycled in NL/EU". Navarre distinguishes 8.4 kt within-EU exports from genuine NL recycling; the model lumps them as low-leak processing. However, indirect trade flows via Belgium, Germany, or UK eventually reach Malaysia (Navarre 2022). The model under-counts this transit leak.