2024-08-16 04:30:06
oneAfter years of publicity campaigns, waste sorting has become a civic gesture for most French people.
Behind this initiative, all logistics deployed by local authorities allow manufacturers to organize by sector (packaging, electrical equipment and Electronictoys, furniture, sporting goods, medicines, etc.) are taken back at the end of their product life by a company (called an “eco-organization”) to ensure recycling.
Created in the 1980s to improve waste management on the “polluter pays” principle, these so-called “Extended Producer Responsibility” (EPR) sectors are now facing new emergencies, not only ecological but also… strategic.
In fact, products we use every day, especially our electronic devices, contain strategic materials that are not available on our territory or are particularly expensive to obtain. The EU has drawn up a list Thirty-four key raw materialsdemand is growing strongly for everything from rare earths to certain specific metals, as well as more common metals such as aluminum, nickel and copper.
Regarding the last metal, we will soon find ourselves facing a clear shortage of supply, a situation that will only get worse in the face of an explosion in demand due to large-scale electrification (especially in transport), while their extraction and recycling are stagnant. Meeting this challenge will undoubtedly be one of the conditions for the success of our energy transition policy. To achieve this goal, rethinking the REP system has become a priority, because from now on it is no longer about avoiding waste pollution, but about guaranteeing the supply of our strategic resources.
Logically inefficient system
The REP sector is managed by industrialists forced by market laws to ensure its development and profitability, but whose paradoxical mission is to organize the reduction of the consumption of raw materials and energy and, ultimately, the production of its own manufactured goods! These are two completely contradictory objectives that tend to support the continuity of mass production of recyclables, while ecological organizations recycle only interesting materials.
Although perfectly logical, as the report demonstrates, this system has proven to be completely ineffective when it comes to shifting our model towards a more sober one.” Performance and governance of the extended producer responsibility sector » The report submitted to the government in June by the Ministry of Finance (IGF) shows that 40% of the product pool of the REP sector remains uncollected and only 50% of the collected waste is actually recycled.
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