The district of Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz, BAB, South of France, gives its personal answer to household waste selective collection: Testa (190 av du Pastré, F-13781 Aubagne), a French plastic processor, produces com- posting trays for private gardens out of mixed plastics waste. The Ecobac unit, created in collaboration with Sita, a subsidiary of Lyonnaise des Eaux specialized in waste collection and treatment, was inaugurated on October 21st. The plant has a capacity of 800 tpa for 20,000 Ecocomposteurs, which corresponds to the plastic waste of 400,000 people. The plant might have to import waste from other regions and from Spain. At the moment, half of the capacity is used. The project should be profitable with 16,000 trays a year. The waste itself has no cost.

According to Denis Fourest, general manager of Ecobac, Testa has made a market study: there are 20 million private gardens in France and designers have been involved in the project: the trays are totally modular and green of course. Ecocomposteurs are marketed through department stores and local authorities. "We do not make granules", insists Fourest, "it is much more sensible to create a whole process for a finished product. Thus we can be in competition with products made out of virgin materials, not with virgin materials with changing prices. The patented process, Eco-line, is rather cheap as it does not include drying after cleaning and sorting. It has something to do with extrusion and compression with rather thick layers. It has nothing to do with a process for virgin materials. And it is our philosophy not to copy the processes for virgin materials and to go directly to the finished product."

The price is rather high (FF 450). It would be interesting to compare with the cost of buying the compost instead of making it in one's garden.