News

Compostable bags on the Parisian markets

On December 16th last year, the city of Paris launched the operation “Zero fossil plastic bags” on the food markets. This action aims to promote the distribution of biobased and compostable bags on the Parisian markets.

The new Parisian markets rule is more ambitious than the energy transition law, because fossil based disposable bags are banned.

Since 1st January 2017, the energy transition law prohibits:

  • thin single-use plastic bags (less than 50 µm thickness) which are non-compostable in house composting, for products packaging at the point of sale
  • non-biodegradable and non-compostable plastic bags for media and publicity (blister packaging).

The biosourced content of compostable bags of plant origin must increase progressively:

  • 30 % in January 2017,
  • 40 % in January 2018,
  • 50 % in January 2020,
  • 60 % in January 2025.

On this occasion, BARBIER Group and NOVAMONT freely distributed over 3 million biosourced and compostable bags to market traders.  Their aim was to inform and alert traders to the different types of biodegradable bags available.

BARBIER and NOVAMONT work together to provide solutions to specific environmental problems and to promote a sustainable behavior. That’s why they have created a common brand “MATERBIO, bags for Earth”. The bags provided during the operation “Zero fossil plastic bags” on the food markets are the results of this collaboration.

For more information, please have a look on the Paris municipal authorities press invitation, the text of the law relating to energy transition, or the NOVAMONT website.