Toulouse: why the Haute-Garonne is lagging behind for selective sorting
Each Haut-Garonnais sorts an average of 10 kg of household packaging less than a national and regional average. A delay that should be caught up in 2023, with the implementation of simplified sorting, which is only used by 5% of Haut-Garonnais. The sorting centers in the Toulouse conurbation will have to be modernized.
Would the Haut-Garonnais be messy and uncivil? One might believe in view of the statistics concerning the selective sorting given by Citéo. According to the company with a national mission specializing in the matter, each inhabitant of Haute-Garonne sorts around ten kg of household waste and packaging less, on average, per year than the regional and national average.
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The inhabitants of our department are not, however, more rebellious to selective sorting than the others. Local initiatives have even been triggered by national awards (Ami) such as En Boîte le Plat, for the re-use of glass packaging by take-out catering or Consign’up, for the consignment of bottles in restaurants. Or for the Unico project currently being deployed on the Sicoval or for the campaign to raise awareness of students about sorting launched by the Federal University of Toulouse.
All plastics in the same bin
The situation of Haute-Garonne in fact corresponds to that of the departments more urban (and suburban) than rural, linked to the weight of the Toulouse agglomeration: “We sort twice as much in the Lot as in the Haute-Garonne, that is. has been a constant fact for years, ”comments Laure Poddevin, regional director of Citéo.
Another cause of such a delay, our department has not yet moved to simplified sorting. This gesture makes it possible to put all plastic packaging with newspapers and magazines, paper-cardboard packaging, aluminum cans and tin cans, in the same bin. Currently, in the metropolis, we can only put in blue (or yellow) bins plastic bottles and flasks.
From 2023, simplified sorting will be imposed everywhere in France: all packaging will be thrown in the yellow bins: plastic films and bottles, newspapers, magazines and other paper, cardboard, and aluminum and steel packaging. A change that will require modernizing our sorting centers, old and unsuitable.
Ultramodern sorting center in Bessières in 2025
“We did not anticipate the extension instructions coming into force on January 1, 2023”, recognizes Vincent Terrail-Noves. The elected official is responsible for collection for Toulouse Métropole and president of Décoset, the union that manages sorting for one million inhabitants of the Toulouse metropolitan area. He assures us: “We will be there in 2023, by adapting the Bessières sorting center for a transitional period, then by putting a three-modern center into service in 2025, probably in Bessières”.
In 2020, in Haute-Garonne, each inhabitant sorted an average of 58.8 kg of household and paper packaging, which can be broken down as follows: 14.8 kg of paper-cardboard, steel, aluminum and plastic packaging , 27.9 kg of glass and 16.1 kg of papers. That is 12 kg less than in Occitanie (70.8 kg) and 11 kg less than the national average (69.8 kg).
The collection will also need to be reorganized
Who says sorting of all types of plastic packaging, in 2023, says an increase in the volume of this packaging and reorganization of collection. “In Toulouse Métropole, the implementation of the deposit extension requires a lot of changes,” says Vincent Terrail-Noves, elected metropolitan in charge of collection for the community. “Already, the law will impose the unification of bins for cardboard, metal, plastic and paper packaging, which will become yellow”, continues the elected official, “currently we have three types of bins, gray with blue cover (18%) , gray with yellow cover (16%) and blue with blue cover (66%), for the same use, this for historical reasons. The new inhabitants but the existing yellow bins will be glued. We are not going to change the 160,000 bins in the metropolis all at once. It will also be necessary to reorganize the collection ”.