Getting waste management back on track

Getting waste sorting back on track is a deconfinement issue.

The health crisis has severely slowed down activity in the waste management and dumpster rental sector. Some fear that the new ambitions in terms of sorting and recycling will be rejected.

With the resumption of economic activity, the amount of waste to be sorted is increasing again.

The health crisis linked to the coronavirus, with the country’s virtual paralysis until gradual deconfinement caused a collateral victim: the waste sector. Closed sorting centers, sharply increasing illegal dumps, waste reception centers largely inaccessible to the public, more numerous incinerations and landfills, the list of issues is long.

The trend today is for improvement

If many sorting centers, or 40% of the park, were closed since last year, 90% of the processing capacities were operational again this month. Of the hundreds of sorting centers listed nationwide according to a company responsible for organizing the end of life of packaging and paper for 28,000 companies, many of them had resumed or confirmed the continuity of their activity. There are only few sorting centers left because of the health crisis, in the Mid-west and california regions remaining the most affected.

The closure of these centers was explained by the need to ensure the protection of employees.

The obligation was to respect barrier gestures and distancing, which was done, and many sorting centers, less modern, could not provide this security to employees, according to the Health Secretary of State. Ecological and inclusive transition, in particular responsible for the circular economy, are paramount in this regard. There was also much less flow, with a drop of 25% for household waste, 50% for small business waste, to minus 80% for construction.

Appeal for the donation system

The closure of almost all the resource centers also led to a drastic drop in voluntary contributions of textiles and a sharp slowdown in this activity.

This is an important issue for the social and solidarity economy and we can see the impacts that this has, with, for example, the call for donations from the local communities (launched in February, this is the first time in its story that the donation system created in 1949, says it is in danger), forced to close since the start of confinement.

In fact, the closure of restaurants, cafes and a large number of businesses explains this drop in input to sorting centers.

With the resumption of economic activity, the amount of waste to be sorted is increasing again.

The contraction was very strong at the industrial level, with – 65% as of the announcement of containment, in mid-March. Then after stabilization, today we are only at – 25% of waste collected.

But it is true that with the health emergency, companies have made less effort to respect the different flows and sort, according to companies that manage household waste for millions of residents over the nation, like Jackson MS dumpster rentals or CA waste management and recycling contractors.…