- The anti-waste bill passed on January 8 in a joint parity committee makes a final appearance, as of this Tuesday, before the National Assembly for a final vote. One of the last steps before its promulgation.
- The bill, one of the cornerstones of Emmanuel Macron's five-year environmental term, aims to get France out of a disposable society.
- Incentives to change behavior, bans, plan to reduce the use of plastics ... This bill includes a large number of measures. Some of which are still not unanimous.
Soon the end of the tunnel for the bill on the fight against waste and the circular economy? The text returns this Tuesday to the National Assembly for a final vote, before its final adoption in the Senate, January 30. This is one of the cornerstones of the ecological policy of Emmanuel Macron's five-year term, Elisabeth Borne, Minister of the Ecological Transition, reminded last Friday when he addressed the press.
Ambition? "Take France out of a disposable society for a completely reusable society", summarizes the Secretary of State Brune Poirson, who piloted this bill since October 2017 and the opening of the consultation on the Roadmap for the circular economy. To achieve this, the bill is teeming with measures. From the end of plastic or single-use containers in fast foods before 2023, to the possibility of selling drugs individually, from 2022, including the ban on destroying unsold or unsold food the creation of a fund of up to 30 million euros to develop re-employment…
"A missed date," say NGOs, which deplore a lack of general ambition when, on the other hand, industrialists and communities are sometimes standing against measures that could, tomorrow, impact them. Brune Poirson answers the 20 Minutes questions .
The anti-waste legislation comes back to the Assembly for a final vote before its final adoption in the Senate on January 30. Is it a formality?
A vote always contains its share of surprise and I would not like to speak for parliamentarians, but I await its result with confidence. Moreover, the real signal is that which was sent at the beginning of January, during the examination of the bill in joint joint committee [composed of deputies and senators and seized in case of disagreement between the two assemblies on a project or a Law proposition]. A common agreement was quickly reached and the anti-waste bill was voted unanimously by this committee. It is extremely rare.
We are therefore at the end of a long legislative process, which began on October 24, 2017 with the start of consultations on the Roadmap on the circular economy ... Are you satisfied with the current content of the law?
We can collectively be satisfied, yes. This bill is not only aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also with a view to saving resources. For more than sixty years, we have been following a deadly logic: each year, we extract more and more natural resources to design products with a very limited lifespan and which then end up either incinerated or at the bottom of a landfill. We have three times less time to get out of this disposable society. It is this dynamic that the anti-waste bill wants to instill.
We could have done as many countries do, by simply deleting some single-use plastics, as many countries do. We consider it to be BA-BA, but that is not enough. To get out of a completely disposable society, you need a more systemic approach that puts society in working order. This therefore implies behavioral changes. In this anti-waste law, we thus create the conditions for developing bulk *, repairing objects, combating planned obsolescence and re-use **, we allow territories that wish to experience the deposit before it possible generalization in a few years ... Obviously, this also implies bans. There is a whole series of them, in the short term. It is, for example, the end of straws, touillettes from next year, plastic or disposable containers for meals served on site in fast foods, starting late January 1, 2023, or a ban on the destruction of unsold new unsold food.
This finally implies a plan to get out of disposable plastic. The bill sets, as a course, the ban on the marketing of single-use plastic packaging by 2040. But, beware, 2040 is our end point. Concretely, this means that by then, you will have to do without all the plastics present in your kitchen and your bathroom. We will bring together as quickly as possible the representatives of industrialists, consumer associations, communities to, together, write the decree of application of the law which will be in force for the period 2021-2025. It is a new approach. It has never been done elsewhere in the world.
Does this bill ultimately go further than what was planned in the Circular Economy Roadmap and its 50 measures presented in April 2018?
Even the anti-waste bill, when we introduced it [before the readings in Parliament], contained only a dozen articles. There are now 130. We wanted to leave as much leeway as possible so that parliamentarians, industrialists, civil society can enrich it. One of these parliamentary initiatives is the ban on the marketing of single-use plastic packaging by 2040. And I supported her from the start. It is this collective construction that allows this bill to be very ambitious.
There is still the imbroglio around the deposit, which you present as the flagship measure of this bill. This point is only dotted now, after the raising of shields from associations of communities and recycling companies. Do you have it across your throat?
I regret that this measure caused controversy, as did the French, who are mainly in favor of it. We had a unifying bill, which received unanimous support throughout its preparation. Some elected officials wanted to make it a site of political confrontation. We had a debate full of fakenews and manipulations on the deposit. Yet it is a powerful tool to improve the collection of plastic bottles and revive the returnable glass market. Ecology deserves better than that.
All the same, these communities opposed to the deposit recalled the investments that they had just undertaken to modernize their sorting centers and that would have called into question the deposit, they say…
It's wrong. The deposit does not call into question investments in sorting centers, communities would continue to be compensated at the same height. This principle is already enshrined and secured in the Grenelle Law of 2009 and the European Waste Directive of 2018, which we are in the process of transposing into French law. I have been working for the interests of communities for over two years. Why would you want me to impose a project on them that would ruin them three months before the municipal elections? It would be ridiculous.
Several NGOs from the Climate Action Network (RAC), including WWF, describe this anti-waste bill as "a missed date". The release of plastic packaging in 2040 is notably considered too late ...
Several of their proposals have nevertheless been taken up and will be implemented. Whatever the outcome, these NGOs would not have been satisfied. Our concern was not to trap the French, which is the case when we make a transition without worrying, behind, about whether or not there are alternatives. We have seen this with the increase in the carbon tax which caused purchasing power to be lost for those who had no other choice than to use their thermal cars, for lack of alternatives. At the time, however, all the NGOs applauded. We didn't want that on the issue of plastic packaging, for which alternatives on a very large scale are still lacking today. Look at the violent opposition raised by the introduction of a deposit system, in a few years, only on the bottles. To make disappear all plastic packaging by 2040 would possibly amount to generalizing the deposit on all the products of our daily life. Do not come and tell me that it is an easy thing to do.
Several measures in this bill remain the subject of challenges *** and they will not come into force immediately but on a staggered schedule. Is there a risk that this calendar will not be kept and / or that this bill will be unraveled ****?
Indeed, the work does not stop with the final vote of the bill. We will now work on the drafting of the implementing decrees and we will of course have to ensure that the timetable set out in this bill is kept. I guarantee it will be. The anti-waste law is serious in the marble of measures and an action plan voted unanimously. Difficult then to question them and to circumvent the law.
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* Any consumer "may request to be served in a container brought by him, insofar as the latter is visibly clean and suitable for the nature of the product purchased".
** Repairability index for electrical and electronic equipment, based on the energy label
*** Unit sales of medicines (to avoid unnecessary waste) are not favored by the Order of Pharmacists or Leem, the professional organization of pharmaceutical laboratories. In addition, several communities are still calling for consultation on the idea of a deposit for recycling plastic bottles.
**** From 2021 for the creation of a REP (Extended Producer Responsibility) sector for cigarette butts, at the latest in 2023 for the prohibition of single-use plastics in fast food restaurants, to January 1, 2022 for the end of systematic printing of receipts or the possibility of selling drugs individually…
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