Plastic-free public procurement: how Lyon banished disposable plastic from its official catering

Can a single procurement contract do more against plastic pollution than an awareness campaign? Experience from France’s Métropole de Lyon suggests it can. The metropolitan authority, which brings together 58 municipalities and around 1.4 million inhabitants, launched a catering framework contract in 2023 in which disposable plastic plates, cups, cutlery and decorations are forbidden and durable, reusable tableware is mandatory. Lyon’s model of plastic-free public procurement is described in a case study published by Zero Waste Europe and Zero Waste France in June 2026. We looked at what worked, what was missing, and what a Hungarian local authority could borrow from it.

In short: Plastic-free public procurement is not a vision but a working practice: Lyon built the exclusion of single-use plastic into the binding technical specifications of its catering contract and into an environmental award criterion weighted at 10 percent. Supplier practices have changed for good, but because no data was collected, the new 2026 contract will require mandatory reporting and penalties.

Why start with catering?

Official events – receptions, award ceremonies, commemorations, working lunches – are among the most visible moments of public life. What is served there is seen by staff, elected officials, partners and residents alike, so catering is both a spending line and a message.

Lyon chose it as its first target for four practical reasons:

• High volumes: the contract is used by every department of the authority.
• Recurring purchase: regular re-tendering makes it possible to raise the bar from one cycle to the next.
• Existing supply: market research carried out in 2022 showed that eco-responsible caterers were already operating locally, including members of TRESS, a local social economy cooperative.
• Ease of action: solutions existed; the job was “only” to write the right requirements.

The contract explicitly requires compliance with France’s EGALIM law (quality food in public catering) and AGEC law (circular economy and waste reduction). Notably, it was drafted before the national Zero Plastics Plan of 2024 and the Micropollutants Plan of 2025 – Lyon did not follow state regulation, it got ahead of it.

What does the Lyon contract ban and require?

The 2023–2026 framework agreement (two years, renewable once for two more) was split into four lots:

• Lot 1: protocol catering – official receptions, ceremonies, inaugurations, award ceremonies, commemorations;
• Lot 2: light refreshments – a reserved contract open only to social economy enterprises;
• Lot 3: cocktails, buffets, lunches and dinners;
• Lot 4: breakfasts, snacks, packed meals and meal trays.

Forbidden are all disposable plastic tableware (plates, cups, cutlery), any product containing disposable plastic regardless of its use, and any single-use decorative item.

Mandatory are durable, reusable tableware at every serviced event, avoiding individual packaging wherever possible, and the provider taking back all containers and packaging at the end of the service – and, at serviced events, the waste as well. For deliveries without on-site staff, the provider returns later to collect the durable containers and may charge a flat fee for doing so.

The one exception is packed, picnic-style meals: recyclable or biodegradable cardboard is allowed, because food must stay safe in transit even in hot weather. Everything inside the bag, however, must be recyclable or biodegradable – no plastic here either.

“Avoid” or “forbidden” – why every word matters

In several places the specifications limit rather than ban: for individual packaging, for instance, they say it must be avoided, not that it is forbidden. This was a deliberate choice in 2022. At the time there was no national zero-plastic legislation in France, and the authority wanted to balance ambition with what the local market could bear operationally and economically.

For similar reasons, no progress plan was set for packaging, as it was judged too burdensome to manage. The contract’s only progress plan concerns organic products, whose share must rise from 35 to 95 percent over the contract period.

Scoring and lotting: the two quiet tools

The strength of the Lyon model does not come from the bans alone. Environmental performance carried a 10 percent weight in the award criteria, assessed on four dimensions:

• delivery methods and logistics (carbon footprint, trip pooling);
• concrete measures to eliminate packaging and disposable products;
• management of food surpluses and food waste;
• the system for collecting reusable containers after unserviced deliveries.

This turned plastic-free operation from a nice-to-have into a condition for winning the contract. Lotting matters just as much. A formal dinner, a coffee break and packed lunches for a hundred people are entirely different packaging and collection challenges. Splitting them into separate lots allowed requirements and logistics to be tailored to each – and allowed smaller, specialised local businesses to bid realistically.

How does it work in practice?

The tender was prepared as early as 2022 by a joint project team bringing together the resources department responsible for contract management, communications, the environment department (agricultural services) and the waste management department. Once the contract was live, however, each department placed its own orders – which weakened central oversight and is now recognised by the authority as a gap.

Instead of formal training, a practical guide carried the rules to the staff placing orders: what to check before ordering, how to monitor delivery on the day, and what to plan for in advance – for example, making sure carafes and water points are available, since bottled water was removed from the price schedule altogether.

At serviced events the provider brings durable tableware and takes everything – dishes, packaging, waste – away at the end. For tray deliveries the provider returns afterwards to collect the containers; a flat fee covers this, and collection trips are pooled where possible. A small but telling detail: plastic thermos flasks were replaced with stainless steel ones, also delivered and collected by the provider.

The logic may sound familiar: districts in Seoul also lend stainless steel tableware to campers and wash the returned items centrally. Reuse systems work best where returning an item is as easy as using it – as Freiburg’s automated cup return system also shows.

Flexibility where it was needed

The 2022 market research also showed that some local providers were still fragile after the Covid crisis, and one of them had no reusable container solution for meal tray deliveries when the contract started. Rather than excluding it, the authority awarded the contract with a clear expectation of transition. The switch began immediately after award, and full compliance was reached within the first year.

This is one of the most important lessons of Lyon’s plastic-free public procurement: an ambitious target and a realistic market are not enemies when requirements are grounded in prior dialogue with suppliers.

What the case study does not tell us

The Lyon example is convincing, but its limits are worth seeing clearly – some of them are acknowledged by the case study itself.

• No figures. The 2023–2026 contract had no mandatory reporting, so the authority has no consolidated data on how much packaging was eliminated, what it was replaced with, or what reuse rates were achieved. Evidence of success is currently qualitative: changed supplier practices and local ripple effects.
• No sanctions. There were no explicit penalties for breaching the single-use plastic clauses.
• The “biodegradable” cardboard exception is a weak spot. The biodegradable label means little in practice if used boxes never reach industrial composting, and food-soiled cardboard is also problematic for recycling. From a waste management perspective, the real answer for packed meals is to drop the packaging or use returnable boxes – and, as shown below, Lyon is moving in that direction.
• No cost data. The case study does not say how prices changed, how large the collection fee is, or what washing costs providers. For a public decision-maker, that would be one of the very first questions.

The 2026 re-tender will therefore require quantitative reporting (waste avoided, packaging composition, reuse rate, collection and washing logistics), explicit penalties and clearer definitions of prohibited and permitted containers.

Beyond the contract: Lyon’s ripple effect

According to the case study, the most telling result is what happened outside the contract. Selected providers now treat operating without single-use plastic as their default, not as a one-off requirement.

The hardest category, packed meals, was pushed further at the authority’s own events: at a staff picnic for 1,000 employees, bottled water and individually packaged salads were phased out, with a gradual shift towards finger food that needs little or no packaging.

Meanwhile, reuse solutions for takeaway food are spreading across the Lyon area; one supplier, with the authority’s support, extended returnable containers to meal deliveries for businesses. The metropolitan staff canteen went further than the contract: it eliminated disposable cups and disposable meal-tray packaging, and plans a deposit-based returnable container system for staff takeaway purchases in 2026.

The effect is also spreading across the authority as a whole. A best practice guide on reducing single-use plastic was drafted in September 2025 and shared with other public buyers in a webinar. ISO 20121 certification (sustainable event management) is under way and will bring requirements such as deposit glass bottles, reusable delivery packaging, tableware in stainless steel, glass or ceramic, and textile tablecloths and napkins. And with funding from CITEO, the French packaging EPR organisation, four plastic-free takeaway solutions were launched for events, retailers, home meal delivery and the canteen. We covered CITEO’s reuse ambitions in detail in our article on its ReUse pilot project.

Plastic-free public procurement in Hungary: what can local authorities adopt?

Lyon considers its model easy to replicate: solutions exist on the market, every authority of any size or competence buys catering, and the contract structure, clauses and guide can serve as a template. The case study names five conditions for success:

1. upstream market research so requirements match locally available solutions;
2. mandatory reporting from day one;
3. penalties for non-compliance;
4. organisational details – water points, collection logistics – sorted out before the contract goes live;
5. deliberate use of the authority’s own events as a testing and improvement ground.

From a Hungarian perspective there is one important difference. In Hungary, placing disposable plastic plates, cutlery and straws on the market has been banned since 1 July 2021, so the first half of Lyon’s ban list is already a legal baseline there. The added value of plastic-free public procurement in Hungary is therefore not banning plastic plates, but ensuring tenders do not simply allow a switch to disposable paper or “bio” substitutes – and instead require reuse and take-back. EU rules point the same way: the PPWR, applicable since August 2026, restricts single-use packaging for food and drinks consumed on the premises from 2030.

Hungarian public procurement rules allow environmental criteria to be taken into account when tenders are assessed on best price-quality ratio, so Lyon’s 10 percent scoring logic can be applied there too. Useful first steps could include:

• a pilot framework contract for the town hall’s own events rather than for all public catering at once;
• tap-water carafes and water points instead of bottled water;
• listing the container collection fee as a separate price item so bids remain comparable;
• a simple per-event data sheet (number of guests, portions served, containers returned, residual waste) so that results are measurable from the first year.

That durable packaging is a matter of infrastructure, not just an environmental gesture, is also shown by our analysis of how European supply chains are changing.

Cécile Bernard of the Lyon metropolitan authority’s waste department has a simple message for other authorities: start with catering, because solutions already exist and the impact is significant and visible. And think about waste reduction not after the event, but from the moment it is planned.

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Related articles

• Citeo’s ReUse pilot project: returnable reusable packaging in French regions – the supermarket reuse pilot of CITEO, one of the funders of Lyon’s takeaway solutions.
• Seoul steps up waste reduction: reusable alternatives in public spaces and campsites – municipal tableware lending and central washing in practice.
• Automated reuse cup return system launched in Freiburg – how returning can be made as easy as using.
• Reusable packaging is becoming critical infrastructure in European supply chains – the cost-per-use approach and the impact of the PPWR.

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Plastic-free public procurement – frequently asked questions

What does plastic-free public procurement mean in the Lyon example?

Lyon built the exclusion of single-use plastic into the binding technical specifications of its catering framework contract. All disposable plastic tableware, any product containing disposable plastic and single-use decorations are forbidden. Durable, reusable tableware is mandatory, and the provider must take back containers and packaging at the end of each service.

How much weight did environmental performance carry in the award criteria?

Environmental performance was weighted at 10 percent of the award criteria. Bidders were assessed on four dimensions: delivery methods and logistics, concrete measures to eliminate packaging and disposable products, management of food surpluses and food waste, and their system for collecting reusable containers after deliveries without on-site staff.

Was there any exception to the plastic-free requirements in Lyon?

Yes, there was one exception: for packed, picnic-style meals, recyclable or biodegradable cardboard packaging is permitted, because food must remain safe in transit even in hot weather. Everything inside the bag, however, must be recyclable or biodegradable, so plastic cannot be used in this category either.

What was the biggest weakness of the Lyon contract?

The biggest weakness was the absence of mandatory reporting. As a result, the authority has no consolidated data on how much packaging was eliminated, what replaced it, or what reuse rates were achieved. The contract also lacked explicit penalties for breaching the plastic clauses, so the 2026 re-tender will address both gaps.

Can the Lyon model be adopted in Hungary?

Yes, the core of the model can be adopted, because Hungarian procurement rules also allow environmental award criteria. Since disposable plastic plates and cutlery have been banned from the Hungarian market since 2021, the real added value of tenders there lies in requiring reuse and take-back, rather than simply replacing plastic with another disposable material.

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🔗 Official sources and references: 👉

• Zero Waste Europe – case study page: Reducing single-use plastic packaging in public procurement
• Full case study (English, PDF): Reducing single-use plastic packaging in public procurement – The examples of catering services for the Lyon Metropolitan Area (June 2026)
• French version (PDF): Zero Waste Europe / Zero Waste France case study – FR

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