Supermarkets could soon offer to return your plastic bottles for a fee. But behind this deposit is an economic arm wrestling match between the town halls and the actors of the large distribution.
Thrown in the nature, plastic bottles will take up to 1 000 years to degrade. Plastic pollutes but how to get rid of it? The government is thinking of introducing a deposit in supermarkets and the French are not against it. “In my mother’s time, we used to bring back glass bottles and fill them up or give them back”, explains a woman. Experiments already exist as in a supermarket in the North where in exchange for your bottle, the machine gives you a voucher.
A loss of one million euros
The bottles are then reduced to flakes and recycled to make new ones. Currently, recycling is mainly done through the yellow bins, a financial advantage for local authorities. The deposit is therefore seen with a bad eye. According to Jean-François Vigier, mayor of Bures-sur-Yvette (Essonne), the deposit would cause the municipality to lose one million euros. This loss could increase the household waste tax.
