Geoffrey Branger 09:04 AM, March 27, 2023

For three weeks, garbage cans have been accumulating in the city of Paris and the garbage collectors' strike continues. So much so that some condominiums lost patience and began to solicit and pay themselves cleaning companies to pick up waste from their building. Europe 1 went to meet them.

8,000 tons of waste this Monday morning in the capital and maybe much more tonight. The garbage collectors' strike could spread to five new Parisian arrondissements, districts managed by the private company Derichebourg where the CGT filed a notice Sunday evening and for an indefinite period. Negotiations underway this Monday morning between employees and management. But the inhabitants are losing patience. Europe1 met the owners of a building who approached a cleaning company themselves.

"It's to vomit"

"It's disgusting, it smells bad. It's to vomit, actually." Laure is one of the owners of this building and according to her, bringing in a private company to collect household waste had become a necessity. "The sidewalk in front of my building was overflowing with garbage cans. Frankly, I was starting to be afraid for my parents, for my children, almost as much as I was at the beginning of Covid. I'm not yet putting on the mask for bacteria, but I'm putting on the mask for the smell because really, it smells bad."

>> READ ALSO - Open bins: what are the health risks?

For Laurie, the caretaker of the building, even more than the smell and dirt, it is the rats and the diseases they carry that worries her. "I've never seen that. Rats move and urinate everywhere. Myself, I have a terrace, I installed ultrasound, I put lemon everywhere because they do not like the smell. It became a phobia."

About fifteen euros per owner

For this collection, each owner of the building had to pay about fifteen euros, a very reasonable sum. The problem is that in this street, not everyone has made this choice and so garbage cans continue to pile up in front of neighboring buildings.

In Paris, the volume of waste still decreased this weekend: 2,000 tons collected thanks to the reopening of three incineration plants around the capital. Several remain blocked this Monday morning, such as that of Argenteuil, in the Val-d'Oise.