The total degradation of these materials is “not guaranteed”, according to handles, which evokes more particularly domestic composters, for which “it is difficult to control the operating conditions”.
MO12345LEMONDE With AFP
Plastic materials, including those qualified as “biodegradable” or “compostable”, must be excluded from domestic and collective composters, recommended the National Agency for the Sanitary Safety of Food, the Environment and the Work (ANSES) in a Notice returned Tuesday, November 29. More than one in three French people recycles its waste in domestic or collective composters (brown garbage cans).
In addition to food waste, such as vegetable peelings, coffee grounds and tea bags, some add plastic waste, including so-called “biodegradable” plastic bags (which degrade under the action of bio-organisms ), “Biosourcés” (made from natural resources, such as corn starch) or “compostable” (which deteriorates under specific conditions within a maximum period of six to twelve months).
But for all these plastic materials, “it is not guaranteed” that they “degrade completely in domestic composters, especially since it is difficult to control the operating conditions”, insists the ‘ANSES. When these composts are reused, for example in vegetable gardens, contamination of the environment and local crops cannot therefore be excluded.
composting food waste compulsory in 2024
“This contamination can come from the various constituents of materials”, such as polymers, residual monomers, additives or organic charges “presenting potential dangers, both for human health and for the environment”, recalls Stéphane Leconte, coordinator of expertise at ANSES.
ANSES therefore recommends not placing any plastic in domestic and collective composters and to favor industrial composting. The agency also recommends reviewing the regulations framing composting. It would be necessary to “prohibit any allusion, even incentive, to put plastic materials in a domestic compost” and to review the standards surrounding biodegradability, with in particular more restrictive criteria, she concludes.
ANSES has been seized by the Directorate General for Risk Prevention within the framework of the law relating to the fight against waste of February 11, 2020, which claimed a report on the health, environmental and societal impacts of matters Biosourced, biodegradable and compostable plastic on the whole of their life cycle.
This same law will make compulsory from the 1 er
é> January 2024 the composting of food waste, either by composing it yourself in gardens or kitchens, either in specific bins, or in Bringing them to collection points made available in public spaces.