The French government has proposed a voluntary, locally implemented deposit-return approach for plastic bottles rather than introducing a mandatory nationwide system, as it seeks to improve collection rates while taking account of significant differences in performance between municipalities.
The proposal was announced on September 4 following three months of consultations involving local authorities, industry, elected representatives and recycling companies as part of the government’s Plastics Plan.
The government said that no mandatory deposit scheme would be introduced under its current approach. Instead, deposit systems would be available to local authorities on a voluntary basis, particularly in areas where plastic bottle collection rates remain low.
The position does not, however, remove France’s obligations under the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR). The regulation requires member states to ensure that at least 90% by weight of specified single-use plastic beverage bottles and metal beverage containers are separately collected each year by January 1, 2029.
To support that target, the PPWR generally requires member states to establish deposit-return systems for those packaging formats. A member state may seek an exemption from that requirement if, among other conditions, its separate collection rate for the relevant packaging format reaches at least 80% in 2026 and it submits an implementation plan to the European Commission by January 1, 2028 showing how the 90% target will be achieved.
France currently remains well below those levels. According to figures cited by the French government, 58.3% of plastic beverage bottles were collected in 2024. The recycling rate for plastic packaging as a whole was 25.7%.
The government said France remains among the EU member states with the weakest performance in this area and needs to accelerate collection and recycling.
However, collection rates vary considerably across the country. Around 230 intermunicipal authorities, covering more than 11 million inhabitants and predominantly located in rural areas, already achieve a plastic bottle collection rate of at least 77%.
By contrast, around 45 intermunicipal authorities representing more than 14 million inhabitants, particularly in urban areas, have collection rates below 35%.
The government argues that imposing a single deposit system across France would significantly alter waste collection arrangements in municipalities that are already achieving relatively high collection rates. It therefore proposes allowing deposit systems to be introduced by authorities that choose to participate, with a particular focus on lower-performing areas.
Mathieu Lefèvre, France’s minister delegate for the ecological transition, said: “Our responsibility is to choose the solutions that work, territory by territory, without penalising the local authorities that have already achieved very good results.”
The approach marks a change in emphasis from earlier discussions over France’s Plastics Plan, in which a deposit system for recycling had been identified as one of the measures being considered to close the gap with European collection targets.
In June, Lefèvre had warned that France’s collection performance could ultimately leave it unable to avoid the PPWR’s deposit-return requirements. At the time, he said: “It is therefore a certainty: given the failure to meet our targets, the implementation of a deposit for recycling will be imposed on us by the European Union on 1 January 2029.”
The PPWR does allow deposit-return systems to be organised at subnational level under certain circumstances, provided the arrangements are consistent with the regulation’s collection objectives. France’s proposed territorial approach will therefore need to be considered alongside the country’s performance against the 2026 and 2029 thresholds.
The government has asked local authorities, industry, recycling companies and other stakeholders to continue discussions on the implementation details of the Plastics Plan.
The wider plan aims to accelerate packaging ecodesign, expand collection, sorting and recycling capacity and increase reuse, with France targeting a 55% recycling rate for plastic packaging by 2030 alongside the 90% collection objective for plastic beverage bottles in 2029.
