Circular economic law

With the watchword “consume less but better”, the age of hyper-consumption is over. This is clear to see in food sales, with a 1.2 % fall by volume in France for consumer goods and fresh produce in-store. In parallel, the French public are demanding more eco-responsible packaging, especially the young generations who put plastic pollution high up on their list of concerns. Hence cardboard has won the vote.

As such, the future for fruit & vegetable stickers is bleak. According to the Act on combating waste and on the circular economy (no.2020-105, published in the Official Journal of 11 February 2020), on 1^st January 2022, single-use plastic will be prohibited and stickers will need to be half bio-compostable. Numerous food industries have requested an exemption, but this is not the case with fruits and vegetables, which only commissioned a feasibility study.

As regards stickers, the fruit & vegetable industry will not necessarily be able to meet the requirements of the Act. To spell it out, everyone is thinking about an intermediate sticker known as “OK compost” (fit for industrial composting), but the production cost will be higher, twice that of a conventional sticker. The industry will also need to work on the cardboard packaging.

The question has been raised over obtaining dispensation for the fruit and vegetables sector, especially for products under the official quality sign (SIQO). A legal analysis is in progress at Interfel, to determine what is possible and what cannot be technically resolved.

At present, the industry’s companies need to quickly adapt to the marketing requirements of certain supermarket sector chains. A project is currently being undertaken by GEFEL (Association for the economic governance of the fruit & vegetables sector), with all the families of the inter-professional association, to meet the objectives of the “Circular economy” act via the development of small biosourced plastic packaging, for example.