in France, more and more attacks in recycling centers

Insults and physical attacks are now part of the daily life of recycling agents in recycling centers.

A waste disposal site closed in Carcassonne, agents attacked in Saint-Brieuc: everywhere in France, waste disposal site agents have to deal with insults and incivility, not to mention intrusions and thefts. Illustration in La Réole, in Gironde, where franceinfo went.

Olivier Bénard is a receptionist at the recycling center in La Réole, a town of barely 4,500 inhabitants, where incivility and insults are almost daily. Regularly, users raise their voices and call out the agents “of lazy people, of civil servants. They say that we are good for nothing, that if we are here, it is because we have not studied, that we do not have a diploma. It happens often. They try to wear you down and do not sort.” explains the Girondin, “just to see your reaction”.

Sometimes some even go further. In 2023, a user tried to strangle Olivier. “He squeezed my neck with both hands, because this gentleman has a lot of tenants in La Réole. He felt that he paid a lot of taxes and therefore that he did not have to sort here. He is came, he tried to put everything in the general waste bin. I explained to him that the recycling went to the recycling bin, that the glass went to the glass and that the paper went to the paper terminals. his bags and threw himself at me.”

Following this attack, Olivier was temporarily unable to work for five days.

A few kilometres away, in Saint-Magne-de-Castillon, projectiles – in this case bolts – were thrown at the agents. More generally, it is the behaviour of many users that worries the union that ensures the waste collection and treatment mission, the USTOM, the Union of Household Waste Treatment Unions.

“It’s not just young people who behave this way in the parks, there are also retirees who consider the park agents as civil servants. And that’s not very good because they are there to do a job,” explains Christian Malandit-Sallaud. A job undermined by numerous acts of vandalism and by numerous thefts as well. Of the six waste disposal sites in this sector,
more than 900 intrusions were observed in 2023 with the theft of scrap metal, household appliances and cables.