Stéphane Place 06h19, May 30, 2023

While an international agreement on plastics is currently under discussion, scientists recall the urgency of sustainable waste management. And for good reason: plastic represents 350 million tons of waste each year worldwide, pushing each of us to take a look at our shopping bag.

One look at the shopping cart and the observation is clear: often, the French have a tide of plastic in front of them. How to regulate the production - and then the purchase - of plastic? This is the question that an international coalition gathered in Paris for a UN summit dedicated to plastics is trying to answer. And this one also arises at the time of shopping. "There are chocolate éclairs, surrounded by plastic. Everything is plastic. To put the vegetables, you have to take a plastic bag ...", says a pensioner in a supermarket in Talence.

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Changing your habits

Difficult to escape plastic, admits this other customer, Rémi, in his forties. "I have the salad wrapper. There's a bottle of fruit juice, it's still plastic. And then there's the offer. Maybe if at the level of producers, they stopped producing plastic... But from the moment it is available in stores, we do not ask ourselves too much the question, we say that it is recycled, "he analyzes.

If recycling has become an argument at the time of purchase, some have decided to review other habits. "In the end, I just bought coffee and mostly took a cloth bag. It's become a habit that I didn't have before, for example," says one customer. "I no longer buy bottles of water, I fill the ones I already have with tap water," says another customer. "And why not go back to returnable glass bottles as before?" says an elderly man leaving the convenience store. Tricks already put in place in some shops, but which may not be enough in the face of the emergency.