What happens to our packaging?

Guided tour of the Arc en ciel waste sorting plant, near Nantes -

20 Minutes

  • “20 Minutes” was able to visit this recyclable waste treatment plant.

  • Since the beginning of the year, it has accepted all packaging, which it sorts so that they are then upgraded.

We put them in the yellow bag or trash and once the garbage collectors have passed, their future does not matter to us.

However, in all of the towns of Nantes Métropole, all packaging (plastic, aluminum, polystyrene, etc.) is now intended for a second life, with the extension of sorting instructions since January 1, 2021. This year, some 38,000 tonnes of yoghurt pots, cling film, leaflets or other toothpaste tubes will thus be sorted in the Arc-en-ciel Veolia plant in Couëron.

Modernized two years ago, the site is open 7 days a week and 24 hours a day to process ever more waste, also coming from the Nazairian agglomeration.

This Tuesday, the factory is running at full speed.

It must be said that the holiday season has given rise to its share of packaging and that the collection rate has increased by 8% recently in the metropolis.

Along 2 km of conveyor belts, waste travels at high speed. Among them, yellow Tri'sac bags, gutted by a gigantic toothed roller on arrival.

“Then there is a mechanical sorting system using a large drum which separates the large items from the small ones,” explains Annaïg Pesret Bougaran, site manager.

Then come infrared technologies and robots using artificial intelligence that allow waste to be divided into 11 categories.

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Aluminum, plastic bottles, cardboard boxes… At the end of the journey, each flow is controlled manually, by about sixty agents who take turns tracking down any errors.

“At this stage, there are still around 10% of undesirable people,” continues Annaïg Pesret Bougaran.

Because the objective is indeed to classify the materials by family (it is the paper, made up in particular of advertising catalogs, which comes far ahead), before being able to sell them to recycling factories in France and in Europe.

Hence the instruction not to stack your different packaging when you throw it away, so as not to complicate operations ...

Reduce waste

By accepting more, Nantes Métropole also hopes to reduce the sorting errors of residents, while "two thirds of trash cans or blue bags could be avoided or better sorted to be recycled", according to the community.

When clothes or any other waste that has nothing to do there are found (they represent about 20%), they join the incinerator of the Arc-en-ciel plant, which burns 100,000 tons of household waste per year, transformed into energy (electricity and heat).

A minority is buried.

While in 2019, each inhabitant produced an average of 421 kg of waste, it is at the roots that the metropolis would also like to act.

"In the long term, the objective will be above all to reduce waste", indicates Mahel Coppey, vice-president in charge of the file in Nantes Métropole.

Objective: a 20% reduction in the volume of our bins by 2030.

Planet

Nantes: Composting your waste in the city has never been easier

Nantes

Nantes: Waste sorting is simplified, all packaging now goes in the yellow bin

  • Factory

  • Plastic

  • Recycling

  • Waste

  • Nantes