Amsterdam is going to remove litter bins from crowded locations to prevent accumulations of rubbish in the capital, deputy mayor Hester van Buren has said in a briefing to local council members.

The council strategy used to be to install more litter bins but with the introduction of deposits on cans and small bottles, Amsterdam has been struggling to cope with the extra litter, as looters rifle through bins looking for bottles and cans.

She said bins will disappear from parks and streets with a lot of fast food outlets or places with large underground waste containers.

Earlier trials have shown that the amount of litter in places where the bins have been removed, such as Damstraat and Noorderpark, has fallen significantly, Van Buren said.

A survey included in the council’s 2025 waste monitor showed that the number of Amsterdammers who labelled their neighbourhoods dirty or very dirty had increased to a quarter. The centre of Amsterdam came in for particular criticism from locals.

Amsterdam has around 12,000 litter bins, which are emptied twice a day in some crowded spots. “Every day, people are working hard to keep the city clean but after a cleaning round, the litter accumulates very quickly again because the bins are being searched,” Van Buren said. “It may not sound very logical, but fewer bins are part of the solution to combat random waste in many places,” she said.

Some of the bins will be replaced by containers that are twice the size of regular ones and the council is also investigating rifle-proof bins. The “bin offensive”, as it has been dubbed, will start in the centre of Amsterdam. The council will decide if the scheme will be extended to other parts of the city in six months.