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What is a consignment?

Since January 1, 2023, many changes have been made through new measures in the AGEC Act. Disposable dishes are part of these changes and are prohibited for any fast food restaurant with more than 20 seats. This measure is especially aimed at large fast-food restaurants like Mcdonald’s, which produces 115 tons of packaging waste per day in France.

But as I’m sure you’re aware, many fast food restaurants are experiencing theft of the new reusable dishes. This is largely due to the fact that it is a “collector’s item” as France is the first country in the world to ban disposable tableware.

Returnable packaging would allow them to be reused several times, thus extending their lifespan and reducing the waste of single-use packaging. This system will operate in the following way: the consumer pays a sum of money, which will be returned once the package is returned.

A deposit system for packaging is being discussed. On January 30, Bérangère Couillard, Secretary of State, invited about 80 organizations to open a discussion on the implementation of this device that would respond to Article 66 of the Agec law. Decisions will be made at the end of these discussions, by the end of June.

As a reminder, the anti-waste law for a circular economy is based on 3 axes:

• The offer of economic actors
• Consumer demand and behavior
• Waste management

It is also based on 7 pillars:

1. Sustainable sourcing: giving preference to responsible resources, both in terms of extraction and exploitation of our resources.
2. Eco-design:taking into account the environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a product.
3. Industrial and territorial ecology:optimization of exchanges and needs in an activity area, whether in energy, water or equipment.
4. The economy of functionality:to privilege the use to the possession of an object.
5. Responsible consumption:buying and consuming with a conscience by taking into account the environmental impact when buying a product.
6. Extending the duration of use:involvement in repair, reuse, exchange, resale, second-hand and donation.
7. Recycling: the treatment of raw materials contained in waste for reuse in new products, whether through composting, sorting or waste recovery, with the aim of no longer throwing away.

Article 66 of the anti-waste law for a circular economy, on the other hand, provides for the implementation of a deposit for recycling and reuse. One of the goals of this article is to achieve 50% less single-use plastic bottles.

Environmental objectives and interests

The purpose of these discussions is first to question the best way for organizations to achieve the percentage of products collected for recycling or reuse. Moreover, this rate should increase over the years to a very high requirement, especially for plastic bottles.

The environmental interests are diverse, and thus to operate an environmental balance of the devices of deposit of packaging for their reuse, will depend on various criteria:

• The number of re-use of packaging;
• The weight of the packaging;
• The routes and modes of transport that will be linked to packaging, distribution, collection of packaging and reuse and/or recycling;
• The end of life of single-use packaging and particularly its percentage of separate collection and its percentage of recycling;

Public policy to promote reuse

The national waste prevention program approves and promotes all relevant mechanisms for taking back packaging with the aim of reuse. Thus the work of this public policy is focused on 4 axes:

1. In order to determine the advantages and disadvantages of the deposit system, the work focuses on the installation and monitoring of experiments on the return to the deposit system as well as the organization of technical exchanges between the actors concerned.
2. The presence of logistical and technical facilitators, such as the use of water-soluble labels during washing, the use of an identical bottle or the installation of a washing center nearby.
3. The costs involved in setting up the system for the actors participating in it.
4. And finally, on the behavior of the actors: their motivation to really use and integrate into the system, they must also find an interest in acting.

Has the deposit system been tested before?

The answer is yes!

Experimentation seems essential in this kind of project. This can already serve to identify the conditions under which this packaging deposit project may be feasible and relevant. It is also a way to make a comparison between these devices and those of single-use packaging.

Ademe thus selected 10 winners in 2016 to test and experiment with different packaging deposit schemes. The call for applications was called “Collection systems for household beverage packaging for reuse or recycling: Ademe ensures the evaluation and valorization of your operation”.

One might think that the packaging deposit could be applied to reusable fast food dishes. It would be possible to set up a system where when you consume on the spot, you have to give a symbolic euro and when you bring back the dishes, the restaurant would give you back your coin. This might be a way to prevent theft of reusable dishes.

To learn more about the AGEC law, you can visitour AGEC Law page.

At CircularPlace, we accompany you in your zero carbon footprint approach with our anti-waste solutions.

Our marketplace is a 3-step process to enhance your unsold and stagnant inventory:

• TheResale, thanks to our marketplace you can sell in batch your equipment and unsold non-food items.
• Donation: if your products do not find takers on sale, our platform allows you to propose your lot in donation to associations.
• Recycling: if your profucts do not find takers, they can be recycled.

CircularPlace has also developed a platform for internal circularity, you can read our article about our White Label solution.