Thursday, January 2, 2020

FRANCE: Les Idiots de Déchets

France has become the land of the idiots of waste.

As of the start of the year, the country has banned single-use plastic plates, cups, plastic bottles by school catering services and cotton swabs.

Plastic straws and cutlery will follow on January 1, 2021.

It gets worse from there, in years to follow "excessive" plastic wrapping, free plastic bottles and on, and on, will be banned.

This is all part of a French effort for a wider-ranging "anti-waste" law. A first version of the law aims to promote the “circular economy.”

Of course, what this really means is the French have no understanding of the economics of waste and the fact that sometimes one-use items are the most efficient, that's why people, even French, use them.

The draconian waste laws are simply another step by the economically ignorant bureaucrats of the state of France to control and exercise power. The French masses are les idiots for falling for it.



  1. Individually wrapped, single-use products are not only often more economically efficient, they are also more hygenic.

    1. More economically efficient? Where is your evidence?

  2. Particularly sad in the land of Bastiat

  3. Ear infections, food poisoning and disease to replace it. Way to progress, France.
    And Brian, you are right, very sad. Although has France ever really followed the thought of Bastiat?

  4. And the same people on a crusade against plastic are also on crusade against energy use (they say CO2, but it is energy). Plastic is used for packaging and one time use items because it is the least energy consuming option. Then of course these are also the people who will complain about the trees grown for paper that are chopped down to make one time use paper products.

    Some plastic packaging has environmental issues but in most cases its a design issue (because of what animals will do with it) more than it being plastic. Or because it is light weight it floats rather than sinks in water. On the other hand for some animals plastic waste is quite useful for them. Not pleasing for some humans to look at, but it does offer a robust material to be used for nests and so on. A glass bottle discarded into the environment will last even longer than a plastic bottle. Everything has tradeoffs but so many people who want to dictate what everyone should do have no clue about them.

    What's best? I don't know. Depends on the priority. If were to make it priority to have a “circular economy" and low energy consumption then there must be a market for used plastic. Instead of making laws people should spend time figuring out what can be made out of it that will sell at large quantities. Do that and the issue goes away.

  5. The only idiot I see here, is the author of this garbage.

  6. My 1st point: I totally disagree with this stupid law.
    My second point, the author has a VERY simplistic view praising single-use plastic. The fact that pollution externalities are not included in the current world economy biases the market toward single-use products. The cost of recycling/discarding/dirtying beaches/killing baby turtles and whatnot is not accounted for. I am not saying the end of the world is coming in 12 years, just that there are costs that some people are escaping and the payer of last resort will handle (taxpayer).