What steps is France taking to tackle its plastic pollution?
As talks continue in Paris on a global treaty to tackle plastic pollution, RFI looks at the size of France's plastic footprint – and what it's doing to reduce it.
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Delegates from 175 countries are meeting in Paris this week for UN-sponsored talks aimed at reaching the world's first treaty on plastic pollution.
France is one of the countries pushing for stronger measures to tackle the problem at source – namely by bringing down the amount of plastic produced in the first place, as well as what happens to it once it's thrown away.
The country has set itself the goal of phasing out single-use plastic packaging within 20 years. But how much progress is France making in the battle to reduce its plastic footprint?
Nearly 5 million tonnes of plastic
Unlike its neighbours Germany, Italy and the UK, France is not among the world's biggest producers of plastic.
But it still uses some 4.8 million tonnes of plastics every year, according to the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
Almost half of that, around 2.2 million tonnes, is plastic packaging. Industrial and commercial packaging makes up around 1.2 million tonnes, while the rest comes from products used directly by consumers.
The other half of France's plastic consumption is spread between the construction industry (around 19 percent), cars (10 percent), electronics (5 percent) and other uses, according to the global Plastic Atlas compiled by the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
All this ends up as nearly 3.5 million tonnes of plastic waste per year in France, around 60 percent of it packaging.
Low recycling rates
France does notably worse than other European countries when it comes to recycling.
In 2020 it was one of only two EU members – along with Malta – that failed to meet the bloc's target of recycling 22.5 percent of plastic packaging.
France came in at 21.4 percent, well below the EU average of 37.6 percent.
Overall, France is estimated to recycle around 23 percent of its plastic waste – and in the greater Paris region, the country's most populous, the rate is as low as 14 percent.
Nationwide, 42 percent of used plastic is burned and 35 percent ends up in landfill, according to the Plastic Atlas.
Like many wealthy nations, France also exports several thousand tonnes of plastic waste to other countries, notably in Asia – a practice that generates transport emissions and increases the risk of plastic pollution.
Crackdown on packaging
France has attempted to tackle its plastic waste by banning more and more single-use products, starting with plastic plates, cups and cotton buds in 2020.
Disposable drinking straws, cutlery, drink stirrers, confetti, Styrofoam takeaway boxes, toys handed out for free with children's fast-food meals and plastic wrapping for fresh fruit and vegetables have all since been forbidden.
The goal is to phase out the sale of single-use plastic by 2040.
In the short term, the French government wants to reduce the amount of new single-use packaging by 20 percent by 2025, eliminate all "unnecessary" packaging and recycle 100 percent of what remains by the same year.
Under the government's action plan, new targets will be set every five years until single-use plastic has been removed altogether through a combination of the "3Rs": reduce, reuse, recycle.
Those principles will apply to producers as well as consumers, with financial incentives for manufacturers that adopt eco-friendlier materials.
Companies in the dock
But environmental campaigners point out the limits of recycling, which is logistically difficult, energy intensive and risks exposing workers to toxic chemicals or generating the microplastics that increasingly pollute our seas, air and food.
Nor do France's broad recycling targets address all the problems.
Polystyrene, for instance, is difficult to recycle and breaks down into toxic substances, which means very little of it is actually recycled – yet because it is classed as a recyclable plastic, producers are free to continue using it in France. It still goes into billions of yoghurt pots a year.
Environmental groups have taken French dairy giant Danone to court over its use of plastic, under a French "duty of care" law that holds corporations to account over their environmental impact.
Activists are increasingly invoking the legislation as away to force action when they feel government policy falls short.
Hopes for a plastic treaty
The global treaty that's the subject of this week's talks in Paris would be another powerful weapon in the fight against plastic pollution.
France is one of 55 countries worldwide that are calling for ambitious and binding limits on plastic – including a ban on unnecessary single-use items, as well as restrictions on hazardous substances used in its production.
Along with the rest of the EU, it has said it is in favour of "polluter pays" schemes and wants restrictions on imported plastic products that don't meet environmental standards from countries that aren't party to the agreement.
"The challenge is to build a coalition of countries that agree to set binding rules with consequences, where until now there was no global consensus or restrictive framework," France's Minister for Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, said this week.
He said that the "priority of priorities" was to obtain commitments to reduce the world's production of plastic.
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