Local authorities and building tradespeople are demanding a PMCB REP (Extended Producer Responsibility) that serves local stakeholders

Associations representing local authorities (AMORCE, Regions of France and the National Recycling Circle) and CAPEB (Confederation of Crafts and Small Building Enterprises) are joining forces to prevent a plan to dismantle this major system for local authorities and building craftsmen with significant economic consequences for very small businesses and taxpayers, and a proven risk of a resurgence of illegal dumping in France.

Local elected officials and small businesses in the building sector cannot accept that an evolution of the REP PMCB, launched by the Government, will lead to penalizing both municipalities and inter-municipalities, therefore taxpayers, and small building businesses that sustain the territories.

The National Assembly was scheduled to vote on Thursday, March 26, on amending the legislative framework of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for the construction and public works sector (PMCB) through a bill adopted by the Senate and subsequently introduced by the Les Démocrates group. On this occasion, associations of local elected officials and the CAPEB (Confederation of Craftspeople and Small Businesses in the Building Sector) put forward a joint proposal, largely adopted by members of parliament through their amendments, aimed at guaranteeing the economic viability of the scheme for tradespeople and local authorities. However, the sudden withdrawal of the bill before even being examined represents a significant missed opportunity and further weakens the process of reforming the EPR scheme for the building sector, just when a balanced solution to the crisis, based on common positions between local authorities and tradespeople, was on the verge of being reached with the support of numerous parliamentarians from all political groups.

Local authorities, on the front line facing the challenges of waste management and the fight against illegal dumping, and small construction businesses, facing significant difficulties in accessing waste collection points, the cost and complexity of the system, share the same observations on the ground and now the same solutions.

They offer:

• Free collection of small volumes of waste up to 3 m³, an essential condition to guarantee simple and effective access for households and craft businesses to selective collection points (professional waste disposal sites, distributor collection points and voluntary public waste disposal sites);
• A streamlined territorial network, taking into account regional planning and rapidly operational waste collection points, defined and monitored in its deployment within the framework of consultation organized by the Regions between the various public and private stakeholders. This consultation will make it possible to identify underserved areas and determine the means to establish professional collection points there and ensure their monitoring;
• A contribution of all materials modulated according to their environmental performance requiring the intervention of eco-organizations, in order to improve the readability and financial efficiency of the system;
• The management of waste from illegal dumps up to 10 m³ from January 1, 2027, thanks to a dedicated fund, to avoid the costs imposed by eco-criminals on communities, and therefore on taxpayers.
• As key players in the vitality of the territories, craft businesses cannot afford to pay again to dispose of a large majority of their sorted building waste due to complex rules for distinguishing between materials.
• Heavily involved in waste management, local authorities and local taxpayers cannot continue to assume alone the collection of waste materials from households and very small building companies in their territory at their waste disposal sites and must be supported accordingly by the extended producer responsibility scheme.

Local government associations are joining forces with CAPEB to oppose the elimination of the free take-back program for small household and professional building wastes across all regions. They are calling on Parliament to take action to ensure the effective and optimized implementation of one of the key measures of the AGEC law, which they voted for. Finally, they are appealing to the Prime Minister to defuse a crisis that now involves a large number of local stakeholders in France and to establish a modern, efficient, fair, and responsible system for managing construction waste throughout the country.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.