Black or yellow trash can? The question arises on a daily basis for 89% of French people who have adopted sorting packaging, 51% of whom say they practice it systematically. Thus, 3.6 million tonnes of household packaging are recycled each year out of the 5.5 million tonnes used by the French. How to explain such a gap when the French are a very large majority to sort their waste? We take stock.
The ubiquity of plastic
For the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir, the finding is clear and the culprit is clear: “Deaf to consumers’ demand for responsible consumption, manufacturers do not hesitate to put packaging on the market that is impossible to recycle. . »
The French agri-food industry actually owes its second place as the main responsible for the country’s carbon footprint to its distant imports but above all to its packaging, of which plastic remains an essential component. Of the 5 million tonnes of plastic used each year in France, 20% is actually used to manufacture industrial and commercial packaging and an equal share is used to make household packaging for the general public. Except that plastic, always very badly recycled, does indeed weigh in the balance of recycling.
35% of plastic packaging is not recycled
The recycling of plastic waste depends on its precise composition Citeo, a company with a mission created to reduce the environmental impact of household packaging and graphic paper.
Bottles and flasks therefore pose no problem: they are recycled and used to manufacture new packaging and products in the textile, automotive or building industries. These represent 65% of plastic packaging.
On the other hand, the recycling of rigid packaging (15%), such as meat trays or yoghurt pots, has yet to be developed.
Above all, part of this plastic waste (20%) is simply not recyclable and must be replaced. These include, for example, the packaging of aperitif biscuits, crisps or chocolate bars.
Faced with this observation, UFC-Que Choisir calls for the prohibition, for marketers, of using materials which do not have a mature recycling sector when there is an alternative and the tightening of measures incentives provided for by the AGEC law, the objective of which is 100% plastic recycling by 2025. The stakes are high: Citeo recalls that one tonne of recycled plastic reduces emissions by two tonnes. CO2 is the equivalent of 21,500 kilometers traveled by car or the energy consumption of an LCD TV for 4,000 days.