A bin to recycle masks at the town hall of the 9th arrondissement.

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New Town Hall

  • The 9th arrondissement of Paris is experimenting with recycling all used masks.

    Surgical, FFP or tissue, they can thus be placed in these specific collection bins.

  • These used masks are then sent to the Yvelines company, Recnorec for scientific research and recycling.

  • The town hall of the 9th district also wishes to have these bins in the schools of the district.

They are found on the sidewalks, next to a garbage can, on a bench, in parks.

Since the start of the health crisis due to Covid-19, surgical masks have been on everyone's noses but also often on the ground in the street.

The town hall of the 9th arrondissement of Paris has therefore decided to tackle this new pollution by launching a few days ago an experiment born from a meeting with the start-up from Yvelines, Recnorec, specializing in the recycling of plastics supposed to be non-recyclable. including single-use masks.

“The issue of recycling fascinates me,” says the mayor of the 9th arrondissement, Delphine Bürkli.

In 2014, she brought to the Council of Paris her desire to fight against the problem of the throwing of cigarette butts.

His experimentation had led to the installation of several ashtrays integrated into the street furniture.

Seven years later, she decided to fight a new scourge and install masks collection bins available to the inhabitants of the 9th district in the courtyard of the 9th district town hall, as part of an operation entitled "Bas les masks ”.

Decontaminated, recycled, reused

All used masks - surgical, FFP, fabric - can thus be placed in these specific collection bins.

“These masks are now part of our lives.

And I decided to tackle this new object, a daily partner.

And our bins are already full, ”explains the elected ex-LR.

And for good reason.

"Surgical masks made of polypropylene degrade into microparticles which can impregnate the soil, if they are not properly discarded, and pollute ecosystems in the long term and harm our health," said the town hall.

This now sends used masks to Recnorec for scientific research and recycling.

Spotted by the Ile-de-France region as part of the ecological and solidarity-based participatory budget, the company based in Plaisir recovers the masks.

They are then left in isolation for a week to ensure their decontamination.

Then are recycled into "healthy material that can be shaped in the workshop", we note within the start-up created in 2018. Then begins a stage of design and prototyping of objects from the material resulting from recycling to produce new eco-responsible objects such as composters.

Because this material can in particular replace wood.

But for the company too, it is an experiment, before the launch of “the industrial solution for absorbing masks and other plastic waste on a large scale”.

"At the start of 2022, with the first production plant, 85,000 masks can be recycled every day", they promise.

Our file Better living the city

On the side of the 9th, the next step is the schools.

Delphine Bürkli wants to install bins for masks in the ten primary schools of the district.

“The idea is to educate students and more generally, I don't want to find any more masks thrown on the ground,” she said.

I want to remain optimistic but this mask is not temporary so we have to find solutions.

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