By Annabelle Timsit
Mountains of trash bags block off streets. Rats and pigeons gnaw at baguettes on the pavements. A persistent, noxious smell permeates the air.
This is Paris in 2023. The City of Light and Love has transformed into the City of Garbage after trash collectors went on strike more than a week ago to protest against the French government's plan to raise their retirement age.
Now, about 7 000 tons of trash are piling up on Paris pavements, the city says, with no one to collect it and many residents anxious for solutions.
France’s capital “has become a giant, open-air trash can”, said Transport Minister Clement Beaune.
The crisis will probably come to a head this week, when French lawmakers debate and vote on the government’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, an unpopular reform that President Emmanuel Macron argues is necessary to preserve the country’s social security system.
Under the proposal, trash collectors, who benefit from a special status because their jobs are physically taxing, would see their retirement age increase from 57 to 59. Unions say this is unacceptable.
They say trash collectors face more health problems than other workers because they carry heavy loads, are exposed to toxic material and work irregular hours.
In a bid to force the government to back off, municipal trash collectors and sanitation workers went on strike last week, and recently voted to extend the strike until at least Monday.
The crisis has sparked political infighting between government ministers and Paris city authorities about how to respond.
About half of Paris’s neighbourhoods, including some of its wealthiest, are serviced by municipal trash collectors and sanitation workers, while private service providers are responsible for the other half.
Private-sector employees are working, but strikers are blockading three garbage incinerator plants outside Paris, so some of the trash that gets picked up has nowhere to go.
Some residents have not had their trash picked up in over a week, leading them to report noxious smells and rats in their streets.
Rats are a problem in Paris even when trash is regularly picked up: In July, the French National Academy of Medicine said in a public health warning that Paris has a ratio of 1.5 to 1.75 rats per inhabitant, making it one of the 10 “most infested cities in the world”. Sewer rats can transmit zoonotic diseases to humans through their droppings or through bites and scratches and are a “threat to human health”, the academy said.
Trash bags piling up on streets, particularly from restaurants and bars with food waste, is likely to attract more rats. Beaune told television station France 2 that the strike was “a matter of public health and sanitation”.
Jean-François Rial, the president of the Paris tourism office, told Agence France-Presse that the situation was also “not optimal for foreign visitors” – an issue that could soon be of particular concern as Paris prepares to host the Olympic Games in 2024.
Online, Parisians shared humorous memes that dubbed the rat the new official mascot of the Paris Games.
The government said it instructed the Paris police chief to use his power under French law to force certain critical workers to stop striking and return to work, a move Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has opposed.
Hidalgo, who is a member of the left-wing Socialist Party and unsuccessfully ran for president last year against Macron, has expressed support for the strike.
Her first deputy, Emmanuel Gregoire, said City Hall has hired private firms to clear up space on pavements so the trash didn’t become a security risk.
“No one is thrilled by this situation,” Gregoire said, calling Paris and other cities “victims” of the government’s refusal to engage with unions over pension reforms.
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