Preventing wastes

 
Setting prices for public services, an efficient waste-prevention tool ?

Olivier Arnold

The financing of public waste management might provide a basic way to prevent wastes if a break is made with the rationale of taxation. Although the idea of setting prices as a function of the service rendered is advancing, we are still far from making the shift toward a price schedule with incentives. Lessons drawn from foreign experiments conclude that public waste management should definitely take the path toward sustainable development.

On preventing wastes

An interview with Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin

“I think our fellow-citizens should have freedom of choice. However they must be informed about the impact of their choices”.

Drafting and implementing a national plan for preventing the production of wastes

Daniel Béguin and Virginie Rocheteau

The modernization of waste management, which started in the 1990s, has been successful. However the assessment is less clear in terms of prevention. Since the volume of household garbage is still increasing despite these efforts, a national plan, announced in 2004, intends to stabilize the production of wastes by 2008. To achieve this, public opinion must be won over.

The Paris Waste-Prevention Plan

Jean-Marc Bourdin

The strategy of the city of Paris for waste management had already foreseen that the continued growth in the volume of garbage would lead to a switch from managing to preventing wastes. Launched in 2004, the Waste-Prevention Plan for Paris seeks to go farther and have a lasting impact on behaviors. Its major axes are: develop an exemplary administration, change behaviors and provide for a more sustainable waste management. Its method is to develop joint efforts for drafting the plan and to involve Parisians in implementing it.

Imagining a new relation to consumption: The “economics of functionality”

Nicolas Buclet

How to sell services rather than material goods and thus work out a response to the problems of managing household refuse and to the challenges both of climatic change and scarcer resources? The “economics of functionality” has a twofold interest, economic and environmental. This discussion of its advantages and of the possibilities for applying it focuses on its real potential and limits as well as the obstacles to overcome.

Local waste management and waste prevention

Francis Chalot and Bruno Genty

An act of 13 July 1992 stipulated that departmental plans were to be drawn up for the elimination of household wastes. These plans (PDEMA) were to provide for waste prevention. Ten years later, the objectives set in most departments in France have not been met. Will transferring authority to departmental boards of supervisors open the way to putting texts into practice? The National Plan for Preventing the Production of Wastes should help.

Centers for recycling resources: Reuse, a sustainable development method

Sylvie Chappelet

From fighting against incineration to preventing wastes: CNIID’s actions for informing and involving the public

Florence Couraud

The CNIID has its origins in a concern about how the elimination of wastes (in particular dioxin-related products) affects health. Rather than inveighing against the effects, this association is trying to act on the causes. It has concentrated on the conditions for a possible society close to “zero waste”.

France Nature Environnement’s point of view

Liliane Elsen

Better late than never: France Nature Environnement is pleased to have been heard, finally. It is taking an active part in implementing the National Plan for Preventing the Production of Wastes. It has called for a democratic debate on such an important topic. Parliament must be involved in handling an issue that entails commitments for our future.

Plastic bags: The manufacturers’ approach

Françoise Gerardi

The plastic bag era is over. Agreeing with distributors and public authorities, manufacturers are trying, already successfully, to find a replacement. They intend to keep this commitment by participating in implementing the waste prevention plan. They also remind us that sustainable development has three pillars, social and economic as well as environmental, and that the first two must also be taken into account.

The concept of the “producer’s broadened responsibility” and the reduction of consumer wastes at the origin

Matthieu Glachant

How to make the concept of the “producer’s broadened responsibility” operational? Does this entail individual or collective programs, a partial or total transfer of responsibility? Who, ultimately, should pay: manufacturers or consumers? Responses glimpsed through a few French and foreign examples…

Wastes and sustainable development

Rémi Guillet

Elimination, environmentally sound elimination, sorting and recycling… these first three phases in sustainable waste management are now more or less accepted and operational. A fourth phase is “no-waste”. This most “virtuous” phase entails radically transforming our modes of production, distribution and consumption. How far to go in the effort to make the preservation of the environment and conservation of resources compatible with the necessary satisfaction of our needs ?

Environmentally friendly production and waste prevention in the packaging industry

Olivier Labasse

Environmentally friendly design and an automobile-maker’s efforts to avoid a negative environmental impact: What criteria? What place for waste prevention?

François Marie

Stop plastic bags!

Serge Orru, Pascale Boyer and Cécile Jaraudias

From Corsica, where it all stared, to Uganda, from Australia to La Ciotat in France, the fight against the distribution of single-purpose plastic sacks is picking up steam. Everywhere, public authorities, distributors and consumers are undertaking concrete actions to reduce the environmental impact of plastic bags. They are encountering success, but progress is still to be made.

Advertisement flyers in mail boxes: The road to waste prevention will be hard and long!

Jacques Pélissard

“One of the principal merits of the Stop Advertisement campaign is to put trash cans on a diet.” This campaign is fighting against the distribution of unmailed advertisements in mail boxes.

Local authorities’ actions for preventing wastes: Taking stock in Europe

Francis Radermaker

Collecting and reclaiming wastes is already an obligation for cities. But the growing volume of collected garbage is making it necessary to cope with the problem at the source. An environmentally friendly civic spirit must thrive if a more responsible waste management and more sustainable societies are to emerge.

Prevention in France’s policy of waste management: The Assises de La Baule

Jean-Luc Straczek

From the first meeting in 1991, which prepared the way toward the July 1992 act with its three major priorities (preventing, recycling and reclaiming wastes), to the meeting in 2003, which returned to the question of reducing wastes at the source, seven successive Assises are evidence of the place that the theme of preventing wastes has taken in French waste-management policy.

Auctions and waste-prevention

Maître Teucquam

The auctioneer’s gavel is a precious tool for recycling and reclaiming wastes. It might take the form of a wrecking ball for demolishing reinforced concrete or a hammer for repairing furniture. Indeed, this ivory gavel plays a significant part in preventing wastes.

Repairing and reusing household appliances: A way to prevent wastes and to advance toward sustainable development

Jean-Luc Tissier