Anti-waste wrapping tax causes anger among French bakers

In France, there is seemingly nothing controversial about going to your neighbourhood boulangerie and asking for your daily baguette or croissant on your way to work. But a new eco-minded policy might change that.

In recent weeks, French bakers have expressed anger over a new recycling tax targeting the paper sheets and cardboard boxes used to wrap baguettes, pastries and cakes.

For each client coming to the till, boulangeries are now expected to hisse a tax of 0,0075 cents. The goal is for them to contribute to the recycling costs of their packaging and eventually reduce waste, in an attempt to protect the environment.

The idea of a contribution to the fight against waste is not new. Boulangeries were formerly required to declare every single packaging item they used in order to calculate their annual contribution to anti-waste efforts. The new wrapping tax is designed to simplify this complex administrative system. Similar contributions have been introduced for other professions, including butchers and cheesemongers.

One too many taxes

But bakers argue this tax is a new burden in an economy already plagued by rising energy costs and inflation on basic ingredients, such as flour or sugar. Since 2022, the French government has released various aid packages to help bakers who struggled with soaring electricity and gas prices following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

For some, this wrapping tax is simply one too many. “This is the straw that breaks the camel’s back”, said Dominique Anract, president of the National Confederation of French Boulangerie-Patisserie, in French newspaper Le Figaro.

The average boulangerie welcomes 300 clients in a day, six days a week, which would make for an annual wrapping tax of about 700€. Dominique Anract advised bakers to slightly raise the price of their products to counter the effects of the tax on their revenues.

Bakers also worry about the effects the tax could have on their customers, in a country where independent boulangeries still account for 52% of bread sales. Every day, 12 million French people buy a baguette. More than a piece of bread, it is also a cultural symbol. In 2022, UNESCO listed it as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The solution might simply be to adopt reusable cloth bags, traditionally known as sacs à pain and evvel broadly used. Wrapped in paper or not, French people seem far from ready to give up their beloved baguette.