How many people today grab a takeaway coffee cup from the local cafe to drink on the go? We don’t know, but the number must be enormous.. Most every one of the above have a plastic top that will last 100s of years. Some cafes still use plastic cups that last a similar time. Is 10 minutes of coffee worth 100s of years of trash?
These items can be seen littering our gutters and on our streets all over the place. If they were all cardboard, they would still be littered, but they would, at least, be gone in a short time.
They do not need to be made of plastic.
On the way home from the gym last week, a distance of about 1 km (1/2 mile), I counted the items of plastic litter on the curb as I walked. In that short distance I counted 63 pieces of plastic litter. Plastic drink bottles, bottle tops, candy wrappers, plastic film, polystyrene fragments etc. That seemed to be a lot to me. I guess it is a generational thing. Our parents would have been horrified to see that amount, whereas it seems to go unnoticed by our youth of today. In another 20 years how many pieces will there be on this stretch, -- 200? What will today’s youth think of that new amount then when they are older? Will their children be so readily accepting of a higher amount of litter? We’re taking Danone to court over plastic pollution – France
Posted on January 14, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News
In September 2022, we issued legal warnings to Danone and a number of other companies including Nestlé France and McDonald’s France, for inadequately addressing the risks related to the plastic pollution they produce. Danone responded, but it wasn’t good enough. So we’re going to court.
We think Danone is burying its head in the sand when it comes to plastics.
In 2021, the company used more than 750,000 tonnes of plastic – the equivalent of almost 75 Eiffel Towers – even more than it did in 2020.
As a producer and supplier of food products generally packed in single-use plastic, it has never adopted adequate measures to address the harm related to its use of plastics.
That’s despite the fact that it’s amongst the top 10 biggest plastic producers worldwide.
Plastics are present throughout its supply chain, with a huge amount used to package its products, including water bottles and yoghurt pots.
What is Danone legally obliged to do?
The French Duty of Vigilance lawis a groundbreaking new law that was adopted in response to the Rana Plaza tragedy – the collapse of a textile factory in Bangladesh in 2013 which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 people. The discovery of labels from famous clothing brands in the rubble moved public opinion. Until the law was adopted, companies were not held responsible for what happens in their value chain.
But now, under this law, large companies with more than 5,000 employees in France, or 10,000 employees in France and their foreign subsidiaries, must publish an annual ‘vigilance plan’ identifying the environmental and social risks stemming from their activities and those of their subsidiaries, suppliers and subcontractors, all around the world. These plans must include mitigation and prevention measures adapted to the severity of these risks, as well as a report on the implementation of these measures.
Logically, given the scale of the plastics crisis, we believe this law should oblige companies to provide satisfactory responses on the subject. But Danone’s ‘vigilance plan’ remains completely silent on plastics.
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