On November 24, 1883, Eugène Poubelle signed an order obliging Parisian landlords to provide their tenants with a container equipped with a lid for household waste. He had been named prefect of the Seine on October 19, five weeks earlier. His name today designates the bin you take out on the sidewalk every week.
The decree did not require a single box, but three.
- Eugène Poubelle imposed in 1883 three mandatory sorting bins for every Parisian building
- Sorting in Paris dates from 1884, more than 140 years before modern practices
- Its name, initially used pejoratively, became official in the dictionary in 1890
Three Bins in 1884, Well Before Recycling Bins
The regulation made three bins mandatory: one for putrescible materials, one for papers and rags, and one for glass, earthenware, and oyster shells. Sorting was thus prescribed in Paris as early as 1884, more than 140 years ago. The containers had to be common to the building, provided by the owner and not purchased by each tenant. The second decree, dated March 7, 1884, was published in the Official Municipal Gazette of the City of Paris.
The capital then had nearly 2 million inhabitants, and the office of mayor was abolished there. The Prefect of the Seine administers the city directly, which explains why a prefectural order suffices to change the daily life of every building.
Owners, concierges, rag-pickers: three grievances
Three bins for the residents meant three adversaries for the prefect. Property owners saw new charges, beginning with the purchase of the receptacles. The concierges, for their part, inherited an extra workload because it was up to them to haul these containers out.
The rag-pickers earned their living from it. Their trade consisted of roaming the streets to buy used items and resell them to processing companies. People accused the prefect of trying to take that market away from them. Yet rags and papers had precisely their own bin within the system.
The press weighed in as early as January 16, 1884.
That day, Le Figaro published one of the most virulent editorials against the measure. The journalist spoke of “Poubelle boxes,” a term that was clearly pejorative at the time. The regulation would be only partially observed, in the face of hostility from a portion of the population.
From sarcasm to the dictionary
The insult eventually took hold. The word “poubelle” enters the Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle in 1890, in its supplement, six years after Le Figaro’s controversy.
Poubelle remained prefect of the Seine until May 23, 1896.
The prefect did not manufacture any bin: he made the container mandatory, and his name stuck to it. The bin in your kitchen, the curbside bin, the three waste categories you may already separate—all of this traces back to an order signed under the Third Republic. The word Parisians used to mock him is the word you pronounce without thinking.
On the details of sorting, sources do not agree. Some assert that the measure, poorly implemented, disappeared from the second decree of March 7, 1884; others link it to this text, and they also disagree on the exact contents of the third bin, whether it was oysters shells alone or together with glass and earthenware.
Sources: aujourdhui.over-blog.fr | pariszigzag.fr
