“Incivility and laziness”: anger rises against those who pile up their boxes on the sidewalks

One week before Christmas Eve, La Poste should have delivered around three million packages this Tuesday evening, its daily rate during this pre-holiday period. So many boxes which, even if they are recyclable, risk piling up in customers’ homes, then in the trash. Too bulky, they sometimes end up on the sidewalk, as shown in the TF1 news report visible at the top of this article, filmed in Marseille.

“It’s not normal, reacts a passerby in front of our camera. They should be folded.” A young woman confirms: “It can’t be done, it takes up more space than in the trash.” “It’s incivism, it’s the laziness of people not to fold them and throw them away. They say to themselves, ‘We’ll put it down and we’ll see’”protests a man. However, a simple gesture is enough to make space: “It’s a shame to come this far and then leave the box in the trash. There was just a little more work to be done.”

With Christmas gifts, the number of packages jumps at relay points, and customers themselves recognize it: they don’t know where to store these mounds of packaging. “I bring a little bit of it from everywhere, so yes, it piles up at my house”says a woman at the microphone of TF1. “It’s bulky in an apartment, so it goes quickly outside in real life”admits another.

Garbage collectors on the front line facing the scourge

However, communities are stepping up to the plate. Jean-Yves Sayag, elected official (DVD) responsible for cleanliness, hygiene and illegal dumping in the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis, is obliged to act as security guard around the trash cans. “I’m a little upset now, because since this morning, four people have come to throw anything in the household waste”he storms. Around a hundred bins specially dedicated to cardboard boxes are gradually being installed in the Marseille city.

The goal: to respond to new consumption methods. “Now, we are in the age of e-commerce and we find ourselves with a lot of boxes: 800,000 tonnes per year thrown away in France”according to Jean-Yves Sayag. Or 10% of all our waste.

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The problem also arises for garbage collectors. On social networks, Ludovic Franceschet, star representative of the profession, seeks to raise awareness of this issue. “Cardboard is omnipresent in what we consume. Food, hygiene, Vinted or Cdiscount parcels, not to mention the thousands of pizza boxes”he emphasized last September in an article in Monde (new window) dedicated to the way cardboard invades our lives. “We have to force with our hands so that everything fits into the yellow container, partly because the size of our bins is no longer at all suitable for our consumption. If it rains, the boxes turn to compote and fall apart. infiltrate into our sewers, then our rivers”he added.