According to the work of a senatorial information mission, if nothing is done, the digital would be by 2040 at the origin of 24 million carbon equivalent tonnes, or about 7% of gas emissions. with greenhouse effect of France, against 2% today.
Le Monde with AFP
At the time of the world leaders are gathered in Glasgow for COP26, Parliament finally adopted, Tuesday, November 2, by a final vote of the Senate, a bill to reduce the environmental footprint of digital and to do from France a precursor country in this area.
This consensual text, worn By Senator Lr Patrick Chaize , includes many measures to support the recycling and rewrite digital devices (smartphones, computers, tablets, etc.) to reduce their impact on the environment.
According to the work of a senatorial information mission, if nothing is done, the digital would be by 2040 at the origin of 24 million carbon equivalent tonnes, or about 7% of gas emissions. greenhouse effect of France, against 2% today. Smartphones, tablets and computers would be responsible for nearly 70% of the digital impact.
The text modified by the deputies does not fully satisfy senators. But they resigned themselves to voting “compliant”, in hand lifted, not to delay the entry into force of the “progress” that it introduces in an area which is still “a dead angle” of environmental policy.
Exemption from drop-out equipment
The most important disagreement is based on the private copy (CPR) fee. Created in 1985, this contribution is levied on the registration brackets – CD and DVDs blank, memory memories and hard disks, telephone or tablet – to compensate for the loss suffered by artists because of the possibility of copying their Works.
To promote re-employment, senators wanted to exonerate the contribution of used equipment. The reconditioning sector accounted for 15% of telephones in France in 2020. Faced with the grievance in the cultural world, but to the chagrin of the repackaging sector, Government and National Assembly eliminated this exemption.
“What mess!”, exclaimed Mr. Chaize, judging this decision contrary to the very objective of the bill. “What bad message to want to tax what we want to encourage,” Renaire Didier Mandelli (LR).
The Jacques Fernique ecologist has asked for “energetic support measures for the repaffed”. “The absence of concrete actions of the government is experienced as a real betrayal by the 5,000 employees of the sector,” said the Federation of Reuse and the Professional Syndicat Sirrmiet.
The text provides that second-hand equipment will be subject to the “remuneration for private copy”, at a “specific and differentiated” rate compared to new devices, taking into account in particular of their seniority. Social and solidarity companies specializing in this reconditioning will be exempted.
An observatory to measure the impact of digital
The text further proposes the creation of an “Observatory of the Environmental Impacts of Digital”, in order to establish more precise data on this complex problem. Because if they are energivorous and subjected to rapid renewal, the digital devices also make it possible to replace movements even more generating co 2 .
It provides for awareness-raising training for the digital environmental impact and “digital sobriety” in primary and secondary school.
It promotes data centers as well as less gourmet electricity networks and strengthens the fight against programmed obsolescence, extending it to software.
Among the measures introduced by MPs: the implementation of digital equipment collection operations accompanied by a return premium and the removal of the obligation to provide headphones when selling mobile phones.