This is a small drop on the scale of the waste produced every day in France. But she is one of those who make the big rivers to fight against the waste of raw materials. AT Blagnacnorth-west of Toulouse, the town hall has decided to bring cloth napkins up to date in the canteens of three schools, volunteers to experiment with this device before it is generalized to all schools in the region. common.
A test that had been under consideration for a while, but that the period of the Covid and at all hygienic and disposable delayed by a few months. Without hurting it. Because if the reusable cloth napkin has a greater environmental impact during its production than a disposable paper napkin, its lifespan is much longer.
2,400 disposable towels used every day
“It’s common sense, it’s about going back to things that existed before. This initiative stems from the exchanges we have with a group of citizens working on the theme of zero waste. We already had “wastemeters” in some schools, tubes where children’s paper towels are collected to show them what it means. There, in three schools, parents will provide clean cloth towels at the start of the week and they will be returned to them in the middle and end of the week to be washed,” explains Camille Mayzoué, deputy mayor for the environment of the municipality. .
And it is far from trivial on the scale of this city which serves nearly 2,400 meals every day in its canteens, that is to say as many paper napkins used and thrown in the trash after having wiped the faces of the students. When we know that 8,500 paper towels that will not be used, it will be one more tree saved, it is a way to motivate the troops to return to the good old fabric. Especially parents who forget or are reluctant to bring clean towels.
For the city, it will also save money and deal with another problem that has appeared more recently. “Our catering management which makes these purchases alerted us that due to raw material problems, there were supply difficulties”, continues the elected official whose services will provide students with a pocket to store their towels made from recycled tablecloths.
Willingness to generalize it in Toulouse as well
This municipal initiative echoes others of the same type that have taken place in recent months in France, notably in Vence a little less than a year ago. In Toulouse, where nearly 29,000 meals are served every lunchtime in school canteens, the cloth napkin is not yet generalized, but put in place according to the wishes of each extracurricular time manager.
“But I’m advocating for all schools to switch to cloth napkins eventually because it’s a lot of waste. Often, it is the parents who are driving this change and it is good that it is done on a voluntary basis because they are the ones who manage after the washing. We can’t do that because we wouldn’t know how to dry them, and buying a clothes dryer is ecological nonsense. We had also estimated the costs between washing products, water and energy and it was a colossal budget”, notes Marion Lalane de Laubadère, deputy mayor of Toulouse for Education who aims to also return to towels. – fabric hands.