INFO FRANCEINFO. The deposit of glass bottles returned to France in Ile-de-France

Leclerc and Système U are joining forces with major beverage brands to revive the glass bottle deposit system, starting Wednesday in the Paris region.

The deposit is back, Wednesday February 7, at Leclerc and Système U. It starts in the Paris region, customers can come and drop off certain glass bottles. Attempts are increasing to revive the good old deposit system because the law encourages reuse.

In front of the screen of a machine taller than her, Françoise reads the instructions and learns the correct gesture to bring back her glass bottles: “You have to hold the bottle by the neck and it sinks by itself.” Then she collects her voucher, helped a little by the owner of the supermarket on rue Oberkampf, in Paris. For Julien Lacave, the instructions are also memories: “I manage a family store, which was created in 1981. At the time, my grandfather did deposits in stores. So we are definitely going back in time.” Habits that other countries have never lost, “like Germany and Belgium who have not stopped the instructions, and it works.”

“We will only be able to do it if we all do it together”

To set up this system, long-standing competitors joined forces: the distributors Système U and Leclerc on one side, and on the other brands like Coca-Cola, Perrier, Vittel, Météor beer. But also Lorina lemonade, of which Alexandre Mariat is one of the directors: “It is more expensive today to reuse than to make something new. I would say about 50% more expensive. It’s a lot but because, for the moment, we are at the beginning of history. Tomorrow’s goal is to move to a 100% deposit system. We will only be able to do it if we all do it together.”

This is the work of Hugues Pelletier, head of the Pétrelle company. Objective: deposit everywhere in France, but with as little journey as possible for each bottle: “One of the big innovations is that we use trucks from cafes-hotels-restaurants that pass through the neighborhood. They will deliver full bottles and they have empty space on the way back. So we take advantage of this space empty so that it can be brought back to a center where it will be redispatched by large industrialists.”

The principle can therefore more easily be developed at the local or regional level, around washing centers. “This is a very important point on an environmental level, but also on an economic level. And it allows the return of deposits on a large scale.” The law requires that, from this year, 6% of packaging be reused out of 100 billion packages used in France.