The debate surrounding the choice of location for the future ultimate waste storage center of SYDNE, the CINOR and CIREST waste management syndicate, is a reminder that La Réunion Island is overflowing with waste. The current site is located at Bel Air in Sainte-Suzanne. It will reach saturation point in 2027. Unsurprisingly, no commune wants to host this type of facility. The mayor of Sainte-Marie says he intends to use all available means to prevent the site from being built in his commune.
Before Western-style consumerism was imported to Réunion, there was no such problem. The Reunionese used their imagination to reuse what was no longer useful. But this ingenuity runs counter to capitalism. Waste is a source of huge profits. This waste is paid for by the consumer on several levels. First, in the price of the product. Secondly, through the payment of a tax to finance waste treatment. And finally, there’s the environmental impact: we have to find a place to bury the so-called ultimate waste.
Incineration is the easy solution. It’s a solution proposed by the same companies that make their profits from processing the products wasted by our capitalist mode of production and consumption. It is financed by the Reunionese, via the tax on household waste. Beyond questions about the environmental impact of these waste-burning boilers, there is the question of what happens to the so-called ultimate waste, the residues of this treatment.

Returnable glass: between 25% and 50% of the price of the product in Madagascar

There is another model very close to La Réunion: the circular economy. This virtuous economy is a necessity for countries that don’t have the purchasing power offered to the Reunionese by public transfers and business subsidies.
In Madagascar, for example, glass containers still have a bright future ahead of them. When a glass bottle is purchased, it is subject to a deposit. For a one-liter bottle of lemonade costing around 1 euro, the deposit is 25 centimes. The price is therefore reduced by 25% to encourage reuse of the container. For a 33-centiliter bottle, the cost is around 50 centimes, but the deposit remains at 25 centimes, i.e. half the purchase price of the product.
Retailers are obliged to pay the deposit. The consumer wins, and so does the environment. In this way, a raw material transformed into packaging is not doomed to simple use.

On La Reunion Island, the exploitation of glass bottle collectors

On La Reunion Island, the deposit system has disappeared and plastic containers have proliferated. Recycling plastic is far more complex and costly than cleaning a glass bottle. Bottle collectors do exist in La Réunion. They are generally unemployed workers or retired people on low pensions. But they are far from being paid 25% of the price of the original product they are helping to recycle. Hundreds of bottles have to be collected to earn a little money, and poverty is exploited.
In Madagascar, plastic bottles are rarely simply used. They are recycled for other uses. The sale of empty plastic bottles is even an income-generating activity.
On the Big Island, packaging recycling is a veritable industry on a national scale.

Let’s stop looking only at France

Why not send missions to Madagascar to study these examples of the circular economy? Why not fight to impose the return of the deposit, paid at least at 25% of the price of the original product?
Admittedly, these measures won’t do the waste profiteers any favors, but they are in the population’s interest. It will also help reduce packaging imports.
Finally, specific regulations are urgently needed to encourage importers to limit the amount of unnecessary packaging in the goods they sell to the Reunionese. If this is not possible within the current framework, then it’s important to imagine how to make this proposal a reality.
Our island was exemplary in terms of the circular economy. It can become so again, as long as it is inspired by examples adapted to its situation, and not to the profits of capitalists.

M.M.