Here, since 2019, we have benefited from simplified instructions for sorting packaging, which have just been generalized on January 1 to almost all of France.

From now on, all packaging - cardboard boxes, paper bags, bottles, tubes, trays, compote gourds or plastic films, as well as aluminum cans, aerosols, capsules and medicine tablets - must be thrown into the yellow sorting bins selective.

Until recently, many tubes of toothpaste, catering trays or yogurt pots escaped sorting and ended up in the household waste bin, gray or green depending on the location, for lack of recycling channels.

The objective of the measure is to simplify the lives of French people who each throw away an average of 582 kilos of waste per year according to the government, and above all to increase the volume of plastic recycling, which is much lower in France than in neighboring countries ( less than 30%).

Recyclable household waste sorting operation in the Batignolles center, in the west of Paris, on January 10, 2023 © Thomas SAMSON / AFP

“The only condition is that the packaging is empty, it is not necessary to wash them”, explains Anne Traband, “materials” engineer at the Batignolles center (17th arrondissement of Paris), managed by the Syctom agency.

Noria of trucks

At the same time, a new "info-sorting" logo, which aims to be more readable, is gradually being deployed on everyday consumer items, clothing, sporting goods, starting with food.

The goal: to clearly indicate where to dispose of the used product.

Clothes and shoes should not go in the yellow bins, but in an outdoor recycling bin or to a solidarity association.

Small household appliances must go to the recycling center as well as tools, materials and green waste.

Since the beginning of January, DIY stores and garden centers have opened sorting containers to supply new recycling channels.

In the center of Batignolles, a noria of trucks parades continuously to unload the contents of the yellow bins of 6 million Ile-de-France residents living in 82 municipalities in western Paris.

At the end of a deafening course of conveyor belts, sifters, optical sorters, magnetic separators and manual sorters, a dozen different materials, well sorted, emerge: gray cardboard, cardboard, paper, steel, aluminum, transparent plastic (PET) and monolayer from mineral water bottles, colored PET, packaging film, Tetrapak-type milk can packaging.

The Batignolles recyclable household waste sorting center in Paris on January 10, 2023 © Thomas SAMSON / AFP

Last sorted flow, a mixture of plastics from three different resins: polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene which had no outlet until now.

The launch of a French recycling channel for polystyrene packaging, Creastyr, announced on January 11 by ten manufacturers and organizations ranging from the Union of French wholesalers to Michelin, should make it possible to supply this new channel.

"Blacks beasts"

A quarter of the 45,000 tonnes of waste that enter the Batignolles center each year are however refused sorting.

They do not belong to any category (toys or broken crockery...) and go back to the incineration.

The simplification of the instructions, anticipated since 2019 in this center, nevertheless "made it possible to increase the tonnages of recovered and sorted materials by 6%" in 2020, specifies Ms. Traband.

Its "pet peeves" are gas cylinders such as whipped cream chargers containing nitrous oxide or helium, which are more and more often diverted from their intended use to be used illegally as laughing gas.

"We find up to a ton a month, when they should be brought back to the dump like any gas bottle," denounces Ms. Traband.

Another problem is that lithium batteries are causing more and more fires.

"Eight or nine fire starts in 2022 in this center alone due to the batteries", adds the engineer.

In packaging, progress is possible: "a third of paper and packaging still go by mistake in gray or green bins," says Ms. Traband.

The thorny problem of “nomadic consumption” waste also remains to be resolved.

Plastic bottles and cans thrown into street bins are almost never sorted and end up directly incinerated.

Recyclable waste at the Batignolles sorting center in Paris on January 10, 2023 © Thomas SAMSON / AFP

The Ministry of Ecological Transition must open a consultation on the plastic deposit on January 30 to try to remedy this.

© 2023 AFP