Paris (AFP)

Sort, reuse, recycle: the anti-waste bill arrives Monday in front of the National Assembly, with uncertainty about the fate of one of its key measures, the deposit for plastic bottles.

While France produces about five tons of waste per capita per year, the government would like to make this text a marker of "the ecology of daily life" and "act II" of the five-year period. It will be examined until December 20 in the hemicycle, with 2,400 amendments to the menu.

Worn by Secretary of State Brune Poirson, it offers a battery of measures to reduce waste, including the ban on plastic and single-use containers in fast food for meals served on site.

But the image of this bill "circular economy" has blurred because of the imbroglio surrounding the deposit of plastic bottles.

Initially, the executive wanted to generalize a mixed re-use deposit device, for glass bottles, and recycling plastic bottles. Either a new gesture for the French who would have recovered a few cents by bringing their containers in dedicated machines.

But the Senate, with a majority right, said no for the plastic, and then the deputies scrambled in a vote in committee.

In the meantime, the government has timed: it proposes an experiment in voluntary territories, before a possible implementation by 2023. While recalling the European objectives of 77% collection of plastic bottles in 2025 and 90% in 2029, while France does not reach the 60% today.

Communities, which sell their waste to specialized companies, are afraid of losing resources with the deposit. Senators also cited ecological motives and pointed to the "lobbying" of beverage companies, like Coca Cola, in favor of the measure.

- "Guarantees" -

For ecologists, we are more divided, even though former minister Nicolas Hulot has taken a stand for mixed orders. All supporters of the re-use policy (glass), NGOs and activists fear perverse effects for plastic recycling.

"We are asking for guarantees that this directive is a transitional solution to the reusable and that it does not encourage us to use more disposable packaging," says the NGO Zero Waste.

The time is therefore "concertation", and the right, like the member Valerie Beauvais, does not fail to attack a "project clutter and badly put together", with "still too many questions".

The MP Matthieu Orphelin (formerly LREM), close to Nicolas Hulot, regrets that the directive "takes too much space in the discussion" to the detriment of "essential points on sustainable consumption or new sorting channels".

The antigaspi project provides for the establishment of eight new EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) sectors, following the polluter pays principle, which requires professionals to finance the waste management of their products.

This will concern tobacco for the recovery of butts, or the building, while the wild deposits of construction are a major concern.

"The construction industry is trying to buy time from the beginning" but "there is urgency," said Laurence Maillart-Méhaignerie, LREM leader for the bill.

Against waste, the text wants to prohibit the destruction of non-food items (hygiene products ...) by asking the supermarkets to give them to associations or to recycle them.

Against planned obsolescence, especially in electronics, the bill wants to create a "repairability index" that will specify whether a product is easy to repair, and facilitate access to spare parts.

A campaign commitment Emmanuel Macron has also landed in this text in committee: the sale of drugs to the unit in pharmacy. Implementing decrees will have to specify the medicines concerned and conditions, while pharmacists and industrialists may oppose them.

Finally, the deputies wanted in committee to prohibit the campaigns of promotion of the Black Friday, commercial event imported from the United States. But this proposal seems mostly symbolic and the device "not operating", we recognize the Ministry of Ecological Transition.

© 2019 AFP