The RIVP project (Incentive tax)

By Amelie, Amaris Consultant

The environmental awareness and the reduction of household waste quantity are some issues that affect more and more our daily life. In this regard, “Grenelle Environment” decided to establish an incentive pricing based on the principle “polluter pays”. Amelie is currently leading a project in line with this ecological approach, for a leader in the waste management. Find out how the RIVP project comes to support the incentive tax’s implementation.

N.B.: the “Grenelle Environement” gathers the French State, local authorities, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organization), employers and employees, divided into work’s groups and whose mission is to discuss about ecological issues and define a plan in favour of Ecology.

• In a few words, could you explain what the RIVP project is?

The RIVP project consists in supplying to local authorities, an invoicing service for the incentive tax. Particulary, the company offers a whole package: equipment (RFID reader systems on collecting vehicles and RFID chip on wastes containers), software (installation, configuration, trainings, setting-up and follow-ups) and methodological assistance.

• What are the context and issues of that project?

In the waste issue, “Grenelle Environment” set objectives to reduce the production of household wastes and increase the recycling rate. So that, the incentive tax has been created to bring people change their habits.

The principle is simple: the more a home produce waste, the more they pay for this. The recycling or fermentable (waste only composed with organic biodegradable material) wastes aren’t billed. So everyone can reduce his bill by recycling correctly.

From now on, when a vehicle collects a household wastes’ container, some elements have to be recorded: the container number, the date and the time, and sometimes, the weight in the container.

The RFID technology allows recording in real time, easily and automatically, the information while the container is emptied,. Without this technology, it would have been difficult to set-up the incentive tax without a considerably increase of the collecting cost.

• What are your role and the Amaris contribution in that project?

I’m in charge of deploying the RIVP solution for local authorities in the following areas: Rhin & Rhône.  I’m currently doing the follow-ups of 7 local authorities.

My added values are my methods of work in the phases of needs analysis as well as in the phases of deployment (trainings, projects follow-ups’, customers relationship).

• What do you like in this project?

First of all, I like the ecological dimension: the incentive tax is an efficient way to sensitize people on reducing the quantity of household waste and on sorting trash.

On the other hand, I like the fact I build something. When I arrived at the beginning of 2010, the company just finished the project deployment on the first site; nothing was industrialised. They still were discovering the field’s issues about how billing the household wastes. So I had to learn “on the spot” and capitalized on my knowledge to not do again the same mistakes. Now, we are industrialising the deployment process.

• Do you think the incentive tax system could be extending to others areas?

This system is already extended. The principle is to pay regarding the consumption you have of the service. In this case, it’s about the household waste collect and treatment. But the principle is exactly the same for the energy (electricity, gas) and the water use for example.