The European Union wants to become a good student in the fight against plastic pollution.
On Monday March 4, the Twenty-Seven announced a series of measures to green their packaging waste with ambitious objectives: to achieve recycling of all of it by 2035 and reduce its volume by 15% by 2040. A challenge of size while a European generated on average 188.7 kg of packaging waste in 2021 - a jump of 32 kg in a decade -, according to Eurostat, and only 64% of it is now recycled.
However, among cups, packages, trays and other waste, two types of packaging particularly fill European trash cans: plastic bottles and cans.
In France alone, it is estimated that 340,000 tonnes of plastic bottles were put on the market in 2022, with only 50% recycled, figures from Ademe.
To overcome this specific problem, the EU text proposes to generalize a deposit system by 2029. Plastic bottles and cans would be sold a few cents more expensive, around 5 to 10% of the price, but this surplus would be returned when the consumer returns the used container to a collection point.
A process already well known and implemented in around fifteen states such as Germany, the Netherlands and even the Scandinavian countries.
Record recycling rates
In all countries where deposits are already installed, the European Union highlights record recycling rates.
In Germany, all supermarkets have had dedicated “Pfand” machines since 2003 to collect plastic and glass bottles and cans.
And if consumers have no obligation to do so, the gesture has completely become part of customs.
Some, nicknamed “Pfandsammler”, “deposit hunters”, even work to rid the streets of these used containers to make ends meet.
In total, up to 98.5% of bottles and cans are recycled across the Rhine, according to the European Consumer Center.
Same observation in the Nordic countries.
In Sweden, cans have been deposited since 1984 and plastic bottles since 1994. Each year, the country recycles more than two billion of them, assures the government.
In Norway, the system is a little different: beverage packaging is subject to an environmental tax but the amount of this tax decreases when the collection rate increases.
This measure encouraged producers and distributors to set up a deposit system in 1999 and here too, the recycling rate for glasses and bottles is around 90%.
Which countries have already introduced the deposit?
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“This will not change anything in the journey of a plastic bottle”
However, this measure is not a “miracle solution”, denounces Manon Richert, communications manager for the NGO Zero Waste France.
“This system can, of course, help improve recycling figures but it does not aim at the real objective that we must have: that of drastically reducing our plastic production.”
“In itself, it’s just another way of sorting your packaging but it will not change the journey of a plastic bottle,” she explains.
Once returned, it will in fact have the same fate as that thrown today in a traditional recycling bin.
It will be collected to be sent to a waste treatment plant.
Some, made of PET plastic, can be used to make new bottles.
Others will be transformed into flakes and resold to make polyester, particularly in Asia.
“Processes that require a lot of water and energy and which generate microplastics,” recalls Manon Richert.
Read alsoFight against plastic pollution: “We will not get out of it by recycling”
According to the activist, the introduction of the deposit could above all lead to a "rebound effect", and contrary to the objective stated by the EU, encourage consumers to continue to buy plastic bottles.
“For years we have been bombarded with a discourse that presents waste sorting and recycling as an easy eco-friendly gesture and we convey the idea that it is not so serious to buy plastic if you recycle it. And there, we will add financial interest,” she explains.
“This could therefore have a perverse effect and encourage the consumption of plastic bottles.”
His concern is already being verified in Germany.
While the law passed in 2003 aimed to reduce single-use containers to 20% of the market, the opposite happened.
Single-use plastic bottles are growing in popularity.
They now represent 71% of the market, compared to 40% ten years ago, according to a study by the University of Halle-Wittenberg carried out in 2021. "It seems that the introduction of a single-use deposit system promotes a narrow way of thinking and a focus on recycling, which hinders the revitalization of multi-use containers,” the text concludes.
A battle of financial interests
“Behind the recycling deposit, it is more a battle of financial interests than an environmental question that is at stake,” says Manon Richert.
For several years, policies have become increasingly aggressive to force manufacturers to use a growing share of recycled plastic in their production.
Demand is therefore growing and the material is becoming more and more expensive.
However, collecting more bottles and therefore recycling more would mechanically increase the quantity of recycled plastic available and therefore lower its price.
“Not really, therefore, enough to encourage them to reduce their production,” laments Manon Richert.
“Ultimately, this measure would risk maintaining the plastic production cycle when it needs to be broken,” she summarizes.
Not to mention that in France, for example, where the debate on deposits is lively, waste sorting and collection are today managed by local authorities.
They are therefore the ones who resell them to recyclers.
By moving to a deposit system, the management of these plastics would fall to manufacturers.
They would therefore recover, at the same time, this financial windfall.
“Industrialists are not going to get rich,” retorts to the newspaper Le Figaro Hélène Courades, general director of Refreshing Drinks of France, which brings together beverage giants including Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
She assures that “the resale of this material would make it possible to finance the system.”
Also read: Weigh, compost, fight against waste... How Besançon wants to empty its bins
Promote reuse
Zero waste France, like other environmental defense organizations, is actively campaigning to favor another system: a deposit for reuse, mainly glass.
“This existed in France until the 1980s. The idea is to recover the containers to wash them and reuse them as is according to the principle of the circular economy,” explains Manon Richert.
“If this were organized on a local scale with, for example, optimization and pooling of transport, the environmental and social impact would be very beneficial,” she assures.
But although local and associative initiatives have multiplied in recent years, the system is struggling to establish itself in political discourse.
“This requires a real paradigm shift and a real will from the State,” continues Manon Richert.
“But it’s this kind of measure that can really achieve our ambition to get rid of everything disposable and the addiction to plastic.”
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