With two weeks of
a garbage collectors' strike
to reject the pension reform, Paris has been transformed into a gigantic garbage dump.
Green and yellow trash cans
overflow on the street
without being picked up.
Around him are plastic bags, boxes, abandoned furniture, which no one takes.
A cloud of doves and crows flies over it and pecks.
Rats roam day or night, without being scared.
Unhealthiness reigns.
The foxes visit the piles at dawn
. The smell is unbearable.
Demonstrators
use them for combustion
in their protests to confront the police and turn the streets of Paris into burning pyres.
The Paris Police Prefecture has ordered weekend requisitions of garbage cans.
But the main problem is that
the three main
garbage incinerators on the Ille de France are blocked.
The trucks arrive and cannot unload.
The problem continues
.
There are at least
10,000 tons of garbage on the streets of Paris
, spread out in front of the doors of each building.
The garbage crews that are in action were requisitioned from a private company and it takes at least two hours to clean them per block.
The work is titanic and unpleasant.
Each truck can receive 5 tons of garbage.
Other buildings have joined forces to summon private companies to collect the garbage that covers their fronts and sidewalks.
Uncollected rubbish on a street in Paris.
Photo: AP
Harvesting has begun in the 16th and 11th districts of Paris.
A relief for the inhabitants of these neighborhoods that became "unusual".
The requisition seeks to accelerate this unhealthy state, when spring approaches Paris and temperatures begin to rise.
But in other neighborhoods
the dirt spreads
, as in the XII.
Large waste production
On the sidewalks of Paris and other large cities, the accumulation of garbage, linked to the strike of the garbage collectors, forces us to consider a reality:
the impressive amount of household waste that they produce daily
.
The deputy director of the circular economy and waste unit of the Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe), Raphaël Guastavi, analyzes
the relationship that the French have with their garbage cans
and the measures put in place to make them overflow less.
“The garbage collectors' strike has highlighted both the importance of household waste collection and
the astronomical volume of waste
emitted by households,” he explained.
The French in general produce 496 kilos of garbage per year and per inhabitant.
Photo: Reuters
The French in general produce
496 kilos of garbage per year and per inhabitant
, according to the Ecological Transition Agency (ADEME).
They admit that the Covid crisis and
the home delivery of food
have increased garbage. A third of the garbage is rotten. It is the most shocking and attracts rats.
"It's a shame to wait until there's a problem to realize it. In the eyes of most French people, dealing with their rubbish is almost
a magical process
. You fill up the bins, you take them out to the sidewalk once or twice a week, and
its content disappears
. Except when you find yourself on a street behind a collection truck, nobody cares what happens to them, even though this service is an absolute necessity, especially in terms of public health," explains Raphaël Guastavi .
the Covid crisis and the home delivery of food has increased garbage.
Photo: Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP
“There is always a revulsion towards waste.
It's dirty, it doesn't smell good, it attracts rats.
And it is that the collection of our garbage is a service whose cost
is hardly seen in our rates
.
The household waste collection tax is just one small line among others.
For the inhabitants, the issue of waste has also often been perceived as a problem.
Take the instructions for selective collection - for a long time no one understood anything.
Today, 249 kg per inhabitant and year of household waste
is thrown away in bulk without sorting
, while
80% could be recycled
”, she clarifies.
At the end of the 80s a real waste industry was created.
Landfills have become classified facilities, with the obligation to have physical barriers to
prevent leakage into groundwater
.
Incineration plants have had to comply with drastic guidelines in terms of discharge into the atmosphere.
And now
they produce heat and power
, which they didn't do in the 1980s.
Paris, correspondent
ap
look also
In photos: the streets of Paris accumulate tons of garbage due to the strike against Macron's reforms
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