Posted Sep 28, 2022, 1:37 PM
Insufficient efforts to reduce their use of plastic. This is the reason given by three environmental NGOs to put several major French agrifood groups on notice.
Launched by the organizations ClientEarth, Surfrider Foundation Europe and Zero Waste France, this legal action targets the Auchan, Carrefour, Casino, Danone, Lactalis, Les Mousquetaires, Picard Surgelés, Nestlé France and McDonald’s France groups. In his press release the NGO coalition accuses these nine firms of not proposing effective measures “to mitigate the risks and prevent serious attacks on the environment, health and human rights linked to the use of plastics”.
While some of these companies have tackled the problem, the measures are often insufficient, according to the three environmental organizations. According to their expertise, Lactalis, McDonald’s France, Nestlé France and Picard would not even have any plan in this area.
A remedy based on French law
However, since 2017, the French law on the duty of vigilance obliges companies based in France and employing more than 5,000 people on the territory, or more than 10,000 in the world, to take effective measures to prevent violations of human rights and to the environment throughout their supply chain. These concrete measures are supposed to take the form of what is called a “vigilance plan”.
This legislation was adopted following the tragedy of the 2013 collapse of the “Rana Plaza” building in India. It provides that companies have a period of three months to meet their obligations and possibly dialogue with NGOs. At the end of this period, they have the possibility of launching summonses.
“Creating a deplasticization shock”
“We have been talking with most of these companies for years,” Antidia Citores, spokesperson for the NGO coalition, told AFP, saying that “these formal notices are a continuation of this dialogue, when force is to see that nothing or not enough is being done”.
“We want to create a shock of deplasticization, these companies need to get on the right path, with quantifiable measures”, adds the advocacy manager, recalling that “plastic causes damage to the environment, health and human rights “.
To illustrate the problem, Maître Sébastien Mabile, one of the lawyers for the NGO coalition, noted that when deplasticization strategies exist, they are “based almost exclusively on recyclable products, of which we know that only a tiny part is actually recycled.
In the columns of the newspaper “Le Monde”, McDonald’s France reacted: “We regret a communication from several NGOs which does not reflect the reality of our practices and the results obtained”. The fast food group claims to have avoided “more than 10,000 tonnes of plastic per year”.
Insufficient recycling
Last March, the UN launched the development of an international treaty aimed at combating plastic pollution, which continues to increase. According to the latest OECD estimates, some 460 million tonnes of plastic were produced in 2019 worldwide, generating 353 million tonnes of waste. Among them, less than 10% are currently recycled and 22% are abandoned in wild dumps, burned in the open air or released into the environment.
For large food groups, the most effective way to tackle the scourge of plastic is to considerably reduce their use at source. The recycling process for this material, which is by nature limited, remains insufficient.
With AFP
