French local authorities seek axing of EU deposit return scheme for plastic bottles

A proposed mandatory deposit return scheme for plastic bottles should be scrapped altogether, French local representatives say, rejecting suggestions by EU member states to exempt countries that already achieve a high collection rate for plastic packaging.

Read the original French article here.

The European Commission tabled its packaging waste regulation in November 2022, increasing targets for recycling and requiring countries to set up a deposit return scheme by 1 January 2029 for plastic bottles commonly used for soft drinks and bottled water.

The European Parliament later watered down the requirement and introduced a derogation for countries that can demonstrate that at least 90% of their plastic bottles are already being collected separately from household waste.

But French local authorities have rejected the proposed scheme altogether, saying it would prove costly to implement and was motivated “by the water and drinks lobbies in a strictly financial interest”.

Meeting in Brussels on 18 December, EU ministers at the Environment Council further lowered the derogation threshold for countries that can collect at least 78% of plastic bottles, an objective described as “reasonably” achievable by French Ecological Transition Minister Christophe Béchu.

Indeed, French legislation already mandates a 77% collection rate for plastic bottles to be attained by 2025, and the country achieved a 60.3% collection rate in 2022, according to France’s environment agency, ADEME.

But French elected representatives were not convinced, saying the scheme should be scrapped entirely.

“The reduction in the exemption is a lesser evil, but it does not fully meet our expectations,” said Yoann Jacquet, head of communications at Intercommunalité de France, a body representing many French local authorities.

“We are still calling for this bogus deposit to be scrapped,” Jacquet told Euractiv France, pointing out that Béchu had earlier defended a “pure and simple scrapping” of the plastic deposit return scheme during a conference with French local authorities at the end of September.

During his speech, Béchu announced that the government would not introduce a general deposit return scheme, saying the proposal “has not met with the full support we need today”.

Recycling is already efficient

Environmental groups, for their part, note that returnable plastic bottles cannot be reused due to hygiene regulations. As a result, they would therefore be sent directly for recycling instead of reuse, explained the NGO Zero Waste France.

The plastics industry, on the other hand, argues that recycling is a system that works well and should be preserved.

“The deposit is a lever that we would be very much in favour of if there were no existing and effective collection and recycling system,” said Jean-Yves Daclin, the French general manager of Plastics Europe, the European association defending the interests of plastics manufacturers.

A deposit-return scheme could even “discourage citizens from adhering to the single sorting gesture”, according to Intercommunalité de France, even though plastic bottles are among the most recycled packaging types, Jacquet told Euractiv France.

A possible loss of revenue

From an economic standpoint, a deposit scheme for plastic bottles could even lead to a loss of revenue for local authorities.

In France, Citeo, a not-for-profit company specialising in recycling, currently collects a fee from beverage companies for each packaged product placed on the market.

The fee is then partly redistributed to local authorities to cover up to three-quarters of the gross costs of collecting, sorting and processing household packaging.

However, with the deposit, “there would be a transfer of revenue to the supermarkets and marketers who would collect the bottles, while the cost to local authorities of collecting other plastic waste would remain more or less the same without the plastic bottles,” explained Daclin.

For Intercommunalité de France, this is a “double penalty” for the French, who would have to pay the deposit and the fee for household waste collection.

“Not to mention the profits made on the margins of the deposit return rates, marketers will have a raw material in the form of recycled PET at very affordable prices,” added Jacquet.

To counter this situation, local elected representatives propose simplifying the sorting process further and focusing on sorting waste in public spaces – i.e., outside the home.

However, this may go against the wishes of French President Emmanuel Macron, who is reported to regard such a scheme as a high priority because “he knows it is very popular with the French, even though it is counterproductive”, Jacquet added.

[Edited by Frédéric Simon/Alice Taylor]

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