The box of a 10-litre pack goes with paper and cardboard, the empty plastic bag goes in PMD, and the tap stays on the bag. That is how Spadel instructs it for the SPA Reine pack. At the office there is one question that does not come up at home: who collects those two streams, and which region you are in.
Which bin takes the box, and which the inner bag?
Two things end up in your bin: a cardboard box and a flexible plastic bag with a built-in tap. Spadel gives three instructions on the SPA Reine pack product page. Take the bag out of the box after use. Put the bag in PMD (the Belgian collection of plastic packaging, metal packaging and drink cartons) and do not detach the tap. Put the box with the paper.
So two streams, not three. The tap is not a separate piece of waste.
Recycling a 10-litre pack in five steps
These are five short actions, and with a little habit they become automatic.
- Let the pack run completely empty. Tilt the box forward on the SPA Fountain or on the table so the last decilitre comes out too. Packaging must be empty to go in PMD.
- Open the box and take the bag out. Leave the tap on.
- Press the air out of the bag, roll it up and put it in the blue PMD bag or in your collector's PMD container.
- Fold the box flat. An unfolded box measures 34.1 by 20.7 by 19.3 centimetres according to the bol.com product sheet, so it takes up 13.6 litres (our calculation), almost one and a half times the water it held.
- Put the flat box with paper and cardboard, dry and with no plastic inside.
Five mistakes to avoid:
- the bag stays in the box and everything ends up with paper and cardboard, where the plastic contaminates the bale;
- someone pulls the tap off and throws it in residual waste;
- the bag goes in residual waste because "more than 8 litres is not allowed in PMD";
- boxes stand unfolded next to the paper container, which then quickly fills up with air;
- some water stays in the bag, and the PMD bag leaks in the kitchenette.
Can a 10-litre bag go in PMD despite the 8-litre rule?
In principle, yes. The confusion comes from the sorting rules themselves.
PMD has an 8-litre limit, printed on the leaflets of the intermunicipal waste companies. Ecowerf spells it out: only household containers up to and including 8 litres, containers over 8 litres must go with hard plastics. That is about rigid containers, such as a jerrycan. The bag of a 10-litre pack is flexible and lies flat after use. Spadel says PMD, and Fost Plus, which organises the collection and recycling of household packaging in Belgium, accepts transparent bags from bag-in-box packaging in PMD. An aluminised bag, according to Fost Plus, does belong in residual waste. So follow what is on the pack, and ask your collector to confirm in writing if they have doubts.
Does your office have to have this waste collected separately?
Yes, in all three regions, under different rules. An office is a business, and businesses have a sorting obligation.
| Region | Rule for businesses | 10-litre packs at the office |
|---|---|---|
| Flanders | 32 waste streams must be kept separate (Vlarema, art. 4.3.2), residual waste billed by weight since 1 January 2026, according to the fact sheet from Renewi | PMD and paper and cardboard through a private collector, or through the municipality as long as you stay under 3 bags of 60 litres every two weeks and the municipality allows it, according to the Flemish government |
| Brussels | PMD, paper and cardboard and glass must be kept separate, proof of collection kept for 5 years, according to the Brussels Region | Keep a contract or invoice from a registered collector; administrative fine of 50 to 62,500 euro for an infringement |
| Wallonia | Decree of 5 March 2015: plastic bottles, metal and drink cartons from 60 litres a week, paper and cardboard from 30 litres a week, according to the UVCW | Ten people on packs exceed the 30 litres of cardboard with unfolded boxes (about 66 litres a week in our calculation below); folding helps, the contract is still needed |
In Flanders you must also keep a waste register at least monthly, and Fost Plus gives a one-time welcome premium of 75 euro to a business that signs its first PMD contract with an affiliated collector, according to VLAIO. One premium per company number.
How much cardboard and plastic does a team of ten produce?
This is our own calculation, with these assumptions: ten employees, 1 litre each per working day, 21 working days a month. That is 210 litres a month, 21 packs, and 252 packs a year.
| Per | Packs | Unfolded boxes | Empty bags with tap | Packaging in total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week | about 5 | about 66 litres | about 5 | around 2 kilos |
| Month | 21 | about 286 litres | 21 | 8.1 kilos |
| Year | 252 | about 3,430 litres | 252 | 97.8 kilos |
We took the packaging weight from the bol.com product sheet: 10 kilos of water, 10.388 kilos gross, so 388 grams of box, bag and tap per pack. How much of that is cardboard and how much plastic is not stated. Spadel does not publish the weight on the pages listed in the sources. The box volume is calculated unfolded (13.6 litres per box); folded flat it is a fraction of that, but how much depends on who does the folding.
How much less plastic does a pack use, and compared with what?
This is where it gets messy: all the figures come from the manufacturer itself, and they do not use the same comparison base.
Spadel gives three figures with three comparison bases. On spa.be: 75% less plastic per litre than the average of the SPA Reine PET range, and 40% less CO2 compared with the same average. On the SPA Fountain page: up to 75% less plastic than the classic multipacks of 6 x 1 litre or 6 x 1.5 litres. In the FAQ of that same page: up to 70% less than traditional PET bottles. For a report to your management the first figure is the most useful, because it names the base and the unit. It says something about plastic per litre, nothing about cardboard, and it compares with bottles, not with the tap.
Large bottles, filters and mains: the waste of the other systems
A bottled water cooler leaves almost nothing in your own sorting. The supplier collects the empty large bottles and cleans them for reuse or has them recycled, Bobex writes. A mains-fed cooler, such as the BRITA VIVREAU or a Culligan on the mains, has no packaging per litre, but it does have a filter that is replaced periodically. Ask in the quotation how often, and who takes that filter away. If you stick to the tap and carafes, there is no packaging at all: Flemish tap water met the standards in 99.56% of analyses in 2024, according to the VMM.
The 10-litre pack sits in between. In the glass: SPA Reine with a fixed composition from the High Fens, at 9 °C from the SPA Fountain according to SPA Fountain. The waste is two actions per pack, and per litre it is the most expensive formula: 1.28 to 1.44 euro, against 0.12 to 0.26 euro on the mains, as we calculated in water cooler rental: price per month and per litre. You order the pack itself separately from a drinks distributor; SPA Fountain helps you choose one.
If you want to know whether mineral water from packs is worth it at your office, read tap water or bottled water at the office first. For the machines themselves, there is the ranking of office water coolers.
Sources
Consulted on 17 October 2026.
- SPA, product page of the SPA Reine pack with sorting instructions and shelf life: spa.be
- SPA, packaging page with the plastic and CO2 reduction per litre and their comparison base: spa.be
- SPA Fountain, page of the 10-litre SPA Reine pack (plastic reduction against multipacks and PET bottles, temperature, ordering): spafountain.be
- Fost Plus, Beter Sorteren, plastic bag from a bag-in-box: betersorteren.be
- Ecowerf, PMD sorting rules and the 8-litre limit: ecowerf.be
- Flemish government, sorting and collection of PMD waste in businesses: vlaanderen.be
- Renewi, 2026 fact sheet on the business sorting obligation (Vlarema): renewi.com
- VLAIO, premiums for businesses that sort selectively: vlaio.be
- Brussels Region, waste management in your business: be.brussels
- UVCW, Walloon sorting obligation for businesses (decree of 5 March 2015): uvcw.be
- Bobex, collection of large bottles for bottled coolers: bobex.be
- Flemish Environment Agency (VMM), drinking water quality 2024: vmm.vlaanderen.be
- bol.com, product sheet SPA Reine 10 litres with dimensions and gross weight, read on 17 October 2026
- Our own calculation: volume per box, number of packs, packaging volume and weight per week, month and year (assumptions in the text)
Comparator
Compare water coolers side by side.
Compare now →
Frequently asked questions
The Beste Waterkoeler editorial team compares office water coolers and drinking water using public sources: product pages, price lists, technical sheets and official figures. The articles are written with AI and reviewed by the editorial team. Every price and figure is shown with its source and the date we read it. We do not test the machines ourselves.