France Plans to Reduce Trash By 15 Percent Over Next Five Years

France plans to reduce trash by 15 percent over next five years

PARIS, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) — The French Ecology Ministry launched on Monday a program designed to reduce household rubbish by 15 percent over the next five years and by nearly a third by 2015.

French Ecology Minister Nelly Olin urged the public to spurn supermarket plastic bags and to think about the increasing amount of plastic packages they are throwing out daily.

According to the ecology ministry, each one in France now throws out, on the average, 360 kilo of trash a year and only 12 percent is recycled and 6 percent transformed into compost, far behind its neighbor countries like Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, which all have household waste recycling systems.

The program will cost 2.5 million euros, said the ministry.