Blog Posts on France

First developed in the 1990s in Germany, the Green Dot does not (as is commonly believed) indicate that packaging is recyclable. Instead, it indicates that its manufacturer has contributed financially towards the cost of waste management - see my previous blog​ for details of this and other commonly used signs and symbols. ​Several years ago, many countr...

​France's 2020 Circular Economy law (the Loi AGEC) has resulted in many changes to their packaging, WEEE and batteries requirements - including substantial alterations to labelling regulations.Triman and sorting instructionsFrom 1 January 2022, the Triman logo will be obligatory on all household packaging except beverage glass (currently only mandatory fo...

​At the beginning of 2020, France passed a comprehensive new law to amend its Environment Code (see our earlier blog for more details), which among many other things introduced new labelling requirements. Since then, a draft decree has also been published, which provides more details about what producers will need to do in future.​From 2021, any packagin...

​France has just introduced extensive new legislation ​(link in French) on waste management and the circular economy (the concept of ​​​designing the economy to minimise waste and pollution and to keep resources in circulation). Among many other measures, the new legislation introduces additional EPR schemes for products including waste from food vendors,...

The French household packaging compliance scheme, Citeo, has announced updates to reporting for 2019 data which will be submitted in 2020. There are changes to the bonus and penalty system and a simplified return for the consumer sales unit statement which has been phased in over the past couple of years. For 2019 data, the tariffs for the sectoral decla...

Earlier this year, the French Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition released their Circular Economy Roadmap (FREC) which is an operational transition from a linear ‘make, consume, throw' economic model to a circular model that integrates the entire product life cycle. This covers ecodesign, management of waste, consumption and reduction of wast...

Earlier this year, the Secretary of State for the Environment in the UK, Michael Gove, announced a reform of the current PRN system based on a consultation taking place later this year. Following this, there has been a lot of talk about modulated fees, which are already in place in the French and Italian packaging compliance schemes, CONAI and Citeo. Modu...

Citeo, which was formed due to the merging of Ecoemballages and the paper scheme Ecofolio, is the packaging scheme in France covering household packaging only. The scheme applies bonuses and penalties for certain actions, for example, a bonus of 8% is rewarded for reduction of the weight of packaging, removal of black carbon dye in plastic packaging and r...

Across the world PRO organisations are available for companies to join in order to comply with their Extended Producer Responsibility reporting. Compliance schemes are membership organisations that register members with the relevant authority and ensure that companies meet their financial obligations under the different EPR directives. Some countries have...