This week, elected officials from Cœur de Garonne went into the field to follow a collection truck to the sorting center. They attended a sorting characterization, which involves taking a representative sample of waste to open it, manually sort it by category, and weigh it.
The objective is to identify the amount of waste that does not belong in the recycling bin and generates additional treatment costs for the community. "We still found a lot of items in bags, but we were also surprised to discover pétanque balls and even a car seat!" exclaims Frédéric PASIAN.
“"The cost of these sorting errors was €430,000 in 2025 and will be over €515,000 for the year 2026! It is important to understand that processing one ton of poorly sorted waste costs 6 times more than one ton of well-sorted waste. And in the end, we all pay for these additional costs!"
These sorting errors have a significant financial impact, with an estimated cost of €430,000 in 2025, projected to exceed €515,000 for 2026. Processing one ton of improperly sorted waste costs six times more than a ton of correctly sorted waste, an additional cost borne by all taxpayers.
