2023-07-09 07:30:00
Separating what is recyclable from what is not is a simple gesture, which everyone can do, and which is as much a matter of ecology as of safety. Little manual.
By Guillaume Mercier 5.8 million tonnes of household waste were produced in Île-de-France in 2021, a record. Published on 07/09/2023 at 07:30
This is the story of a lithium battery that cost 40 million euros. This battery was like all those found in our electronic devices, but it was in a place where it should never have been, in the yellow garbage can of a careless person. One day in July 2019, shaken and crushed with the rest of the plastic, cardboard and metal waste, it caught fire, reducing to ashes two thirds of the waste sorting center of Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes, put into service two years earlier, in 2017, at a cost of 23 million euros.
Three years and 17 million euros in insurance funds later, the center reopens in October 2022, with particular emphasis on safety and education. “The fire safety alone cost 2 million euros for the new centre. There was also a campaign to raise public awareness of the risks caused by waste that should not be there, ”describes Christian Robache, mayor of Montévrain and president of Sietrem, the joint association that owns the site.
A simple gesture
Proper waste collection, beyond the risk of fire, begins in fact from the yellow bin, in everyone’s home. Each waste produced must be put in the bin intended for it, and the choice is not so difficult to make. “The message to convey is simple: all packaging goes into the sorting bin, including yogurt pots, there are no questions to ask,” says Alexandre Guyon, regional director of Veolia, operator from the Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes site. Only plastic films, such as those used to close packages of ham, for example, should be thrown away. “And of course, the yellow bin is not intended to accommodate either clothes or baby diapers! exclaims Sylviane Alfonso, operational unit director, who assures us that such waste is regularly found in her center.
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“Well sorting your waste is a simple gesture, which everyone can do, and which is very useful”, also recalls Yann Wehrling, vice-president of the Île-de-France region in charge of ecological transition, climate and of biodiversity. The chosen one spent a morning in a sorting center, to try out the job of those who sort the waste arriving in whole dumpsters in this center on a daily basis.
An essential process
This task in the shadows, painful because it is repetitive and while standing, comes at the end of the long but essential process of recycling waste. It is the fourth stage of a journey that begins with three large machines. First the trommel: this large cylinder which turns on itself is pierced with holes of three different diameters in order to separate the waste according to their size. Then the ballistic screen: this is a vibrating belt that stirs the waste to send cardboard, flat and lighter, upwards, and plastic, hollow and heavier, downwards, on a conveyor belt. Then comes optical sorting: mirrors rotating at a high rotational speed send and receive light beams, the nature of which allows the machine to identify what material the objects it receives are made of. During this process an electric current is also used which attracts the aluminiums.
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Once these phases have been passed, the waste is relatively well separated from each other according to its material, but the enormous quantity of waste, around 20,000 tonnes per year, and the potential errors of the machines still require human intervention to finish work.
Pride
Then come the sorting agents, like Sara Mohamed. Employed for twenty years in the center, the one that her superiors describe as a “Swiss army knife” as she masters different know-how in the company, says she is very proud of her work: “I understood by practicing this profession to what what we were doing here was important for the environment,” she says. Once the waste has been manually separated, “bales” come out of the factory, which are like large millstones made of plastic or cardboard. It is these “balls” that will be used in recycled materials.
In 2021, Île-de-France produced 5.8 million tonnes of household waste, a record since the Île-de-France Regional Waste Observatory began its annual report in 2000.
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