The action initiated by three NGOs targets nine groups, including Danone and Carrefour, for non-compliance with the law on the duty of vigilance.
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This is a new breach open to the front of the fight against plastic pollution. A coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) bringing together clients, Surfrider Foundation Europe and Zero Waste France has put nine giants of the food industry and distribution for non-compliance with the duty of vigilance in plastic.
This is an unprecedented action, launched on Wednesday September 28, and which targets Auchan, Carrefour, Casino, Danone, Lactalis, McDonald’s France, Les Mousquetaires, Picard and Nestlé France. A first step before seizing the Paris court if, within three months, the groups implicated did not “suit a vigilance plan compliant and implemented the appropriate measures to mitigate the risks and prevent serious damage to the environment, health and human rights linked to the use of plastics “.
Unique in the world, the law relating to the duty of vigilance of companies was adopted in 2017 in reaction to the drama of the Rana Plaza: in 2013, the collapse of a building housing workshops in Bangladesh had caused death of more than 1,000 workers working for textile multinationals. It imposes on companies with more than 5,000 employees in France, or more than 10,000 worldwide, to establish, to publish and to effectively implement a vigilance plan intended to identify the risks and to prevent serious damage to human rights, health and the environment that may result from their activities and those of their subsidiaries, suppliers and subcontractors.
Several legal actions have already been undertaken against large French groups on the basis of this pioneering text. The first was initiated in 2019 against Total and its petroleum megaproject in Uganda. Other assignments followed, including that, in 2020, still against Total and its contribution to climate change, or towards Casino for deforestation in Amazon. But it is the first time that it has been used in the field of plastic pollution.
global warming
“We consider that plastic plastic poses a major risk on the environment, health and human rights”, comments the lawyer for associations, Sébastien Mabile, whose firm, Seattle, also supports The appeals launched in 2020 against Total and Casino.
The formal notice, which Le Monde was able to consult, detail the protean threat represented by plastic. Pulled by the packaging sector, global production should triple to exceed one billion tonnes by 2060, according to forecasts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Because it is based on the extraction and transformation of fossil energy, the manufacturing of plastic contributes to global warming up to around 3.5 % of the world annual emissions of greenhouse gases.
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