The end of fly-tipping? When craftsmen dump their rubble for free

In Emerainville (Seine-et-Marne, east of Paris), the company Yprema, which specializes in the treatment and recycling of construction waste, has seen its volumes of old concrete blocks, tiles, bathroom ceramics and demolition concrete deposited by building tradespeople almost double in one year.

"In 2023-24, we collected 3.700 tonnes of inert construction waste from craftsmen, compared to around 2.000 tonnes in previous years," explains Yprema's sales director, François Przybylko.

Including waste from demolition sites run by large specialist groups, Yprema says it received a total of 170.000 tonnes of sorted waste last year.

Since mid-2023, he has been paid by one of the four new building eco-organizations launched to organize the collection, sorting and recycling of waste from the sector, Ecominero (with Ecomaison, Valobat and Valdelia).

However, the group does not currently see any link between the increase in construction waste collected and the gradual implementation since May 2023 of this new REP (extended producer responsibility) waste treatment sector.

The sector - known as PCMB for "Construction products and materials for the building sector" - is built on the polluter-pays principle: it is now the distributors of materials themselves, those who put them on the market, who pay a fee to an eco-organization to finance the management of the end of life and the recycling of the materials when they have become waste.

So, at the other end of the chain, construction companies and craftsmen now benefit from free disposal of their demolition waste at collection points (distributors, recycling centres), provided that it is sorted.

2.089 illegal dumps in 2023

Previously, they had to pay to dispose of their deconstruction waste at dumps or recycling companies. This prompted some to abandon them at the edge of a wood or along a field at nightfall, unseen and unheard.

The NGO France Nature Environnement (FNE), which in 2019 counted just over 1.000 fly-tipping sites in France, still counted 2.089 in 2023.

"The objective, of course, is that with the introduction of free disposal, fly-tipping will be reduced as much as possible and that there will no longer be any reason to dispose of this inert building waste anywhere other than at a specialist site," explains François Demeure-dit-Latte, CEO of Ecominero.

According to him, we are already seeing "more than 20% of waste brought by waste holders" in some companies. "This will continue to increase, since the service will become more and more well-known and companies will understand more that by sorting their waste better, they will be able to obtain this free service."

"I don't agree," replied François Excoffier, president of the federation of recycling companies Federec, interviewed by AFP. He contests the new system, for which he calls for a "comprehensive reform."

"The sector is difficult to set up, nothing works, because construction companies are not used to sorting their waste and do not have the staff to do so," he says.

According to him, they complain about paying twice for the same service: when purchasing the materials since the cost of waste disposal is now included in the price (in the eco-contribution); then finally at the recycler who does not give them free service when the waste is not sorted.

"And for us, recycling companies, the new system doesn't suit us either," he adds. "Ecominero is paying us 30 euros per tonne to recover rubble, whereas we were charging our customers 49 euros per tonne for this service before. "It's clearly a loss for us."

This does not prevent Ecominero from aiming to "recycle more than 9 million tonnes of waste by the end of the year", according to Mr. Demeure-dit-Latte.