A job posting published in 2026 by the association Les Retournées, in Anglet, is looking for a team leader for a food packaging washing line. The role involves supervising the collection, sorting, washing, inspection and reconditioning of bottles and jars before they go back into circulation. Nothing spectacular in the job title, but it gives a fair description of a trade that did not exist ten years ago and is now developing across France, quietly, far from the carbon-impact messaging that fills the sector's communication.
Packaging reuse is almost always presented as an environmental topic. It is also, less visibly, a local employment topic, with some rather specific characteristics: these are physical activities, rooted in a local area, that cannot be offshored as easily as a standard production line.
A sector that already employs people, far from critical mass
According to a barometer produced by Deloitte for the Vrac et Réemploi network (the French bulk and reuse network) in 2024, the packaging reuse sector accounted for around 9,000 jobs in France that year, in an industry that is still very young: 80% of operators have been in business for less than five years. The same barometer counts 69 washing centers in France, for around 1,000 collection points at retailers.
These centers remain largely underused: their utilization rate did not exceed 20% in 2023, even though they would have the capacity to process up to 300 million packages a year, compared with 12.5 million actually washed that year. This gap matters for employment: the industrial capacity, and therefore the jobs that come with it, already exists in France. What is missing is the return volume needed to run it at full capacity, and therefore to turn underused jobs into lasting full-time jobs.
The broader scale of the circular economy
Taken as a whole, the circular economy carries much more weight. A monograph by UDES (the French federation of social and solidarity economy employers) published in March 2025 counts 810,000 jobs linked to the circular economy in France in 2021, or 2.9% of total employment, an increase of nearly 200,000 full-time equivalents since 2010. The pillar with the largest share is “extended service life”, which covers reuse (réemploi), reutilization of items that have become waste (réutilisation) and repair: 350,800 jobs, or 43% of the sector's workforce. Recycling accounts for 164,800, and sustainable sourcing for 200,000 full-time equivalents.
Packaging reuse is only a fraction of this pillar, alongside textiles, furniture and household appliances. But it shares the same underlying logic: these are labor-intensive trades, hard to automate fully, because they rely on visual inspection, handling and cleaning operations that do not adapt well to a fully robotic line, especially at volumes that are still modest.
Collection, washing, recirculation: trades rooted in a local area
A joint report by the Union pour le Réemploi Solidaire and the Réduire+ network puts the number of social and solidarity economy (SSE) organizations offering reuse solutions in France at more than 2,500, for around 40,000 local jobs that cannot be offshored, a large share of them in work integration. This figure covers solidarity-based reuse as a whole, well beyond packaging alone. It nonetheless illustrates a trait shared across this entire sector: collecting a used item, inspecting it, cleaning it and putting it back on the market are tasks carried out on site, close to where the item was used.
An example documented by UDES in its 2025 monograph shows what this looks like at small scale: a cooperative (SCIC, a French multi-stakeholder cooperative) in the south of France, with nine employees, whose business is reintroducing a deposit system for glass packaging. It collects, washes and recirculates bottles and jars, relying on partnerships with local producers and shops within a tight radius, and even entrusts the transport of collected glass to a company using electric vehicles. Nine jobs, one area, one short logistics loop: this format can be found, at varying scales, in several French organizations in the sector.
A significant share in work integration
What raw employment figures do not always show is the nature of these jobs. A notable share of reuse organizations, particularly in the social and solidarity economy, operate under work integration agreements (insertion par l'activité économique). The UDES monograph documents the case of a cooperative holding several of these agreements in waste management, recycling and building finishing works, with the explicit mission of fighting long-term unemployment while developing a profitable business.
Packaging collection, sorting and washing jobs call for gradual on-the-job learning rather than advanced initial qualifications, which makes them fairly natural entry points for people who have been out of work for a long time. Reconditioning reusable packaging is not primarily meant to be a work integration tool, but a significant share of the organizations doing it in France today also use it that way, without always highlighting it in their communication.
What this means for a company rethinking its packaging logistics
For a company considering building or outsourcing its reuse loop, this employment dimension is more than a communication point to add at the end of a brief. It also weighs on concrete choices: a washing hub located close to delivery areas means shorter collection runs, and therefore a better logistics footprint, and often draws on a local workforce already available in this type of organization. A consolidated flow to a single distant site may look simpler to organize on paper, but it reproduces, at packaging scale, the same trade-offs between centralization and local roots that the whole reuse sector has faced for ten years.
The sector is still far from mature: underused washing centers, a return rate that remains insufficient, an industry made up of 80% young operators. But the employment structure already taking shape, with local jobs that are hard to offshore and a pathway into work integration for some of them, is an argument the sector still discusses too little, even though it has a concrete bearing on where to locate a reconditioning hub.
Sources
- La Gazette / Les Tablettes Lorraines, “Le secteur du réemploi veut changer d'échelle” (Deloitte barometer for the Vrac et Réemploi network, 9,000 jobs in 2023, 69 washing centers)
- UDES, circular economy monograph (March 2025): 810,000 jobs in 2021, breakdown by pillar, case study of the glass deposit cooperative
- Union pour le Réemploi Solidaire and the Réduire+ network, briefing note for the 2026 municipal elections (more than 2,500 SSE organizations, 40,000 local jobs that cannot be offshored)
- Job posting, Les Retournées, team leader for a food packaging washing line, Anglet