Posted Sep 28, 2022, 6:30 AM
The waste reduction policies implemented by France over the past two decades leave more than something to be desired. A number is enough to convince you of this. Each inhabitant still produces 583 kg per year whereas in eight years, he will have to have reduced this mass to 500 kg. An ambition impossible to hold unless “a strong acceleration of the current trend”, estimates the Court of Auditors in a report which it officially makes public this Wednesday.
Set in 2015, this objective suffers from a lack of relevant data to assess whether the trajectory is correct, regret the financial magistrates.
Stick to six targeted key indicators
This case is far from isolated. Their report draws up a non-exhaustive list of around forty “milestones” to be achieved, which pile up according to legislation: from the level of collection of plastic bottles to be achieved (90% in 2030) to the rate of energy recovery to be produced (at least 70% of waste in 2025), including the volume of regenerated and reincorporated plastics (400,000 tonnes in 2025).
So many goals that “fail to play [leur] role”, that of “guiding public action” because “both too numerous and published too late by Ademe (the Ecological Transition Agency) from incomplete local data”, tackle the wise men of the Cambon street. A criticism that they had already issued in 2011 in a previous report and remained unanswered. But this time, they accompany it with a new recommendation, that of sticking to six key indicators targeted on the main issues of waste management (prevention, collection, recovery, disposal, etc.).
The financial judges also point to the continuous increase in expenditure linked to waste management. The increase has been 4.3% per year over the past twenty years, mainly driven by treatment costs. That is a cost estimated in 2016 at more than 124 euros per inhabitant and per year, borne at 85% by local taxation.
Relaunch incentive pricing
A situation that the Court of Auditors cannot explain with regard, again, to a nationally set objective: that of increasing to 15 million in 2020 the number of inhabitants concerned by the incentive pricing, a device consisting in invoicing them the service according to the amount of waste they produce. Today, only 6 million people are subject to this system which “has nevertheless shown its effectiveness in reducing tonnages and management costs, in France and abroad”, estimates the report.
The local authorities which could implement it are reluctant to do so, alleging its high cost, its complex management and the random nature of its product. These are all disadvantages that the household waste collection tax (TEOM) avoids, which is however much less fair. Its calculation is based on the rental values of a property, regardless of the number of occupants.
The TEOM would therefore not have enough to push them to reduce their waste production. Unlike the incentive pricing that tourist municipalities, in particular, would be well advised to adopt, the report says. Otherwise, their attendance will remain a source of additional costs borne by permanent residents, warns the Court of Auditors, which calls on the public authorities to make the intermunicipalities take a new step in this direction.
