French industry keen to avoid German mistakes
there will go down the same draconian route as their counterparts
in Germany when they come to update the country's packaging waste
legislation early in the new year.
French legislators are preparing new regulations on the recycling of packaging waste, with the first set of proposals expected early in the new year.
But the recent fiasco over the draconian new system in Germany - which had knock-on effects throughout the whole food and drink industry - has made French manufacturers wary of change for change's sake.
The current packaging recycling system, introduced in 1992, is similar to that in Austria and Germany in that it focuses on a single operator, in this case Eco Emballages, which co-ordinates the collection, sorting, disposal and recycling of packaging waste throughout the country.
While food industry association ANIA believes that there are certainly improvements to be made to the system - not least more efforts to reduce the overall levels of packaging waste produced by the food industry and other operators - it also believes that the current scheme works well.
ANIA said that the changes to the German system - which saw the introduction of a deposit system for all non-returnable packaging and which subsequently led to many stores simply refusing to sell such products - should not be repeated in France, and that greater thought should be given by the legislators to the role played by packaging in keeping food products safe.
This role is becoming increasingly important in the light of numerous food scares, not only because advances in packaging technology have a knock-on effect on the safety of food, but also because the packaging is also the primary source of information for the consumer when it comes to making the right choice about what to eat.
ANIA added that packaging was also becoming an increasingly important part of the competition between food companies, and that any draconian changes to the current system could have a serious impact on consumer choice and price as a result.
If, as in Germany, France were to impose tough restrictions on the use of non-returnable packaging, even with the undoubtedly well-intentioned aim of reducing packaging waste and protecting the environment, this would lead to a substantial reduction in competition in the food industry, since products not packaged in returnable materials would be priced out of the market, the food industry association warned.
France is the second largest packaging waste recycler in Europe, after Germany, with 800,000 tons of packaging converted into fuel in 2002 alone. Also like Germany, and a dozen other European countries, Eco Emballages uses a green dot to denote that a packaging type can be recycled, and more than 400 billion food and non-food products carry the dot across the Continent.
There are no suggestions as yet that the French legislators are preparing any major changes to the current system, but ANIA is clearly concerned that they will take the Franco-German collaboration idea a step too far and go down the same route as their counterparts in Berlin.
