Starting January 1, 2024, the French government has introduced a new law that requires individuals, households and businesses to compost.
It is estimated that 82 kilograms of compostable waste is discarded per person per year, and this law will significantly increase the feedstock pool for France's circular bioeconomy.
Let's take a look at France's recycling initiatives to date and how this new law will affect the various types of businesses that utilize organic waste.
New legal requirements
From January 1, 2024, households and businesses in France will be required by law to separate organic waste and ensure that it is collected or taken to municipal collection points. The waste will be used to make compost and fertilizer to reduce the use of harmful chemical fertilizers in agriculture.
The government also plans to use it for the methanization process, which uses methane released from the decomposition of organic waste to generate electricity or heat.
This supports France's energy transition law, which aims to get 10 percent of the country's natural gas from renewable sources by 2030.
To help households and businesses comply with composting laws, all local authorities across the country must provide their residents with bio-waste collection bins. The Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe) will allocate a budget of Euro100 million to support local implementation measures.
Depending on whether public authorities choose to contract with the private sector for collection, this law could be a boon to existing organic waste collection startups. A French bio-waste startup called Green Phoenix is hoping to win a public contract from the Strasbourg public authorities to carry out city center waste collection. A similar venture is Les Alchimistes, a startup that collects household and business biowaste from 12 cities, including Lyon, Nantes and Marseille, via a variety of low-carbon modes of transportation, including horse-drawn carriages.
This law has gone some way towards solving the problem of the large quantities of organic waste still being incinerated in France, which the 2009 "incineration tax" was intended to address, but contained a loophole whereby incineration for energy recovery would be eligible for a tax deduction. This makes recycling and reusing the material still much less economically viable than burning the fuel - the utilization of biomass is far less important than converting it into agricultural inputs or biomaterials.
The implementation of the composting method means that organic waste will be converted into a valuable resource instead of being incinerated or landfilled. This is a huge business opportunity for corporations and startups. They can provide composting services, develop composting technologies, manufacture organic fertilizers and bio-based products, and so on. In addition, this will create more jobs in other environmental industries as organic waste decreases.
Overall, France's composting law is an important step towards a more sustainable lifestyle and economic development. It will encourage more people and enterprises to participate in the circular economy, promote the effective utilization of resources and reduce negative impacts on the environment. However, the concerted efforts and cooperation of governments at all levels, enterprises and the public are needed to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of the implementation of this law.
Difficulties with the forced composting method
The difficulty with mandatory composting laws is the lack of enforcement mechanisms, which leads to actual implementation relying mainly on individual consciousness. For example, the French government has not supported the implementation of the law through means such as fines.
In response to these criticisms, the Ministry of Ecology responded that the government plans to take strong measures to ensure the effectiveness of the law, including a large-scale public awareness campaign this fall to encourage public participation.
The non-governmental organization Zero Waste Europe also points out that less than one third of the population in France has access to local composting facilities.
The quality and coverage of organic waste collection varies from place to place, which undermines the importance of a sound and universal public infrastructure to promote the circular bioeconomy nationwide.
How much importance does France place on the circular economy?
France has already achieved some success in the circular economy. In fact, according to Europe 2020 data, France has the third highest rate of recycled material use in the European Union, after the Netherlands and Belgium. 19.3% of France's total raw material use is made up of recycled materials.
The country has also worked on organic waste management over the past decade. Even in 2016, France has banned supermarkets from disposing of unsold food. between 2016 and 2020, the country has reduced food waste by 10%.
In 2018, for the first time, France took a major initiative to introduce a nationwide circular economy roadmap for waste price stabilization policies. For biowaste, the roadmap sets out plans on how to support agriculture, which is an important part of the French economy. It highlights the need to return all organic waste to the soil, including through fertilizers and composting.
The road map also calls for quality control of agricultural inputs based on biowaste. It hopes to strengthen existing quality standards for recycled fertilizers by ensuring that the final product is not degraded by contamination with organic matter or low-quality biowaste. It also envisages labeling fertilizers to draw consumer attention to high-quality recycled material products.
The document sets out broad policy objectives, but needs to be implemented through specific laws. One of these is the "Law 2020-105" of 2020, the law against waste and for a circular economy. This was the origin of the composting rules.
This 2020 anti-litter legislation mandates composting for the first time nationwide for entities that produce more than 10 tons per year. By 2023, this requirement will be extended to any entity that generates more than 5 tons of organic waste per year. The recent household participation rule is the final step in mandating composting for all.
However, the 2020 Anti-Waste Act doesn't just cover organic waste. By 2026, the law will completely ban plastic packaging for fruits and vegetables in an effort to eliminate one of the largest sources of plastic waste pollution in the environment - single waste plastics.
