Edouard Philippe launches anti-waste plan for circular economy

By 2020, electrical, electronic and furniture equipment will have to offer consumers simple information on their service life.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe unveiled Monday the outline of the government roadmap to promote a circular economy promoting the robustness and recycling of consumer products.

"An obsolescence of which we are today convinced, (...) it is that of a model where one extracts, one manufactures, one sells, one throws", he declared after the visit of the SEB factory in Mayenne, which has made the repairability of its electrical household products one of the axes of its industrial development.

The Prime Minister then spoke of some major measures of a roadmap, the fruit of five months of work, which has fifty and is a battle plan anti-waste, encouraging companies to manufacture more robust and repairable products.

By 2020, electrical, electronic and furniture equipment will have to offer consumers simple information on their service life and the possibilities of repairing them through an index that incorporates these criteria.

"It's about directing consumption towards the most robust products (...) and products that can be repaired more easily," said Philippe. The text also plans to increase the legal compliance period (guarantee), now set at two years, at European level, and to facilitate complaints to consumers via an internet portal provided for this purpose.

ONE LOGO FOR SORTING

In addition to the goal of "extending the life of products and developing repair", the government plan aims to develop recycling channels.

A single logo, "Triman", will indicate for example if this or that product is recyclable.

The government also wants the creation of new recycling channels for toys, sports and leisure items or DIY equipment, but also a real sector for mobile phones, of which 30 million sleep in the drawers of the French, said Edouard Philippe.

The Prime Minister also raised the idea of a solidarity order by setting up collection points for recyclable packaging - plastic bottles and cans - which would feed funds dedicated to an environmental or humanitarian cause.

"The landfill is more lucrative than recycling, it is not a good logic.by the end of the five-year period, we must make recycling competitive with the landfill," insisted Edouard Philippe, announcing a reduction in the VAT on recycling to 5.5 percent and an increase in the general tax on polluting activities.

The "recovery rate of household waste" in 2014 was 39 percent in France, a figure much lower than that recorded in Germany (65 percent) and Belgium (50 percent), according to the government.

"A boost to communities" was also announced to implement an incentive charging on waste collection in which users will pay their fees based on their volume of waste.

These disparate mechanisms must be partly integrated into the future law implementing the new European directive on waste, the forthcoming finance laws and result in regulatory measures.

In a statement, the association France Nature Environment (FNE) welcomed an "encouraging but incomplete".

"On the deposit, for example, the government promotes recycling rather than reuse, the one that our grandparents practiced with their glass bottles," said Nathalie Villermet, FNE.

(With inputs from Reuters)