France to make non-recyclable packaging more expensive

France plans to introduce a new tax system next year that will make plastic packaging made from virgin materials more expensive that those produced using recycled plastic.

According to Junior Environment Minister, Brune Poirson, during an interview with ‘Le Journal du Dimanche’ (JDD), the move is part of a wider plan in the country to achieve 100 per cent plastics recycling by 2025.

"When there's a choice between two bottles, one made of recycled plastic and the other without, the first will be less expensive," she told the newspaper. The difference in cost could be up to 10 per cent more or 10 per cent less, she added.

Poirson did not give an exact date for the implementation of the system, but said the Government wanted to action it “as early as 2019.”

Other measures that could be instigated, she said, included increasing taxes on landfilling plastic and reduce tax on recycling initiatives.

She also spoke of standardising collection systems across regions to lessen consumer confusion, as well as making labelling clearer on plastic packaging to incorporate a logo indicating whether or not recycled materials have been used in production.

Finally, she said that despite “eliminating the superfluous” through the banning of plastics straws and disposables set to be implemented in France by 1 January 2020, that the opportunities were not on banning plastics, but on recycling them.