French environmental services concern Suez is working with the managers of Paris's Rungis wholesale food and horticultural market to expand waste sorting and recovery under a new contract valued at €31m. Although the contract will run for seven years, a number of key targets are to be achieved by 2025, among them doubling the proportion of source-separated waste, Suez announced at the end of last week.
To reach that goal, Suez has introduced new working methods to optimise performance of the market’s recycling yard and sorting centre. It is also working to improve source-separation through the use of more easily understandable signs as well as through training for market staff and outreach to the market's wholesaler customers.
The new measures also included setting up a platform for donations of unsold produce, a system for processing produce that is too severely damaged, and also biowaste composting and anaerobic digestion, said Suez. Waste collection and on-site logistics are to be managed using the environmental services group's electric vehicles.
The Marché d'Intérêt National (MIN) de Rungis is among the largest wholesale produce markets in the world. The current efforts to address and reduce waste are aligned with the market's CSR strategy, but are also intended to enable the Paris institution to comply with new 2024 requirements under the AGEC (Anti-Waste and Circular Economy) Law mandating separate collection of biowaste.
