One of the most popular foods in France, Camembert is traditionally sold in a small round box made of wood. However, this legendary packaging risks disappearing. Indeed, a new regulation on recycling must be voted on in the European Parliament in a few days. This famous text imposes certain objectives for all packaging from 2030, in order to reduce waste. Unfortunately, there is no dedicated channel for recycling wooden Camembert boxes. “It would be too expensive to create a logistics chain”indicated Macronist MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin at theAFP Wednesday November 15, 2023. The same day, the elected official from Normandy tabled an amendment with her parliamentary group. Concretely, she demands that the recycling obligation does not apply to wooden packaging such as boxes of Camembert, oyster baskets and trays of strawberries, nor wax packaging, like that of Babybel.
Camembert: French MEPs want to save the traditional packaging of this cheese
Stéphanie Yon-Courtin’s parliamentary group is also calling for a report to be produced by the European Commission to assess the availability of recycling infrastructure for these types of packaging. “Before asking to recycle wooden boxes, there is already a lot to do about plastic packaging”underlined for his part MEP Jérémy Decerle. “If we want to caricature Europe before the elections, we start bothering Camembert producers and their wooden packaging… That makes everyone jump!”also specified the French Secretary of State for Europe, Laurence Boone. “We have to do recycling, we have to encourage companies to use recyclable packaging, we have to. Afterwards, we need a little pragmatic realism and not annoy the Camembert producers“, she also added. French MEPs François-Xavier Bellamy and Arnaud Danjean have also tabled amendments aimed at excluding wooden packaging from the scope of the regulation.