The Plastic Problem: assess, plan, action 

Throughout its lifecycle, plastic has a seriously negative impact on the environment, human health and human rights. It harms crucial marine ecosystems, contaminates our soils, generates significant greenhouse gas emissions, and puts human health at risk through exposure to microplastics and toxic chemicals. 

Yet plastic production is set to triple by 2060. 

Rather than reducing the production of plastics, companies are too reliant on recycling – a strategy with limited potential to address the problem, which places the responsibility with the end user, and enables companies to continue with the harmful single-use plastic model. The use of recycled plastic also raises a toxicity risk to health and wildlife that cannot be ignored. 

With only nine percent of plastics ever made being recycled, the process of recycling plastic remains fraught with problems, many of which are not realistically surmountable. This means manufacturers will continually need to produce more plastic than can be recycled.  

To this end, it is critical that businesses shift their strategy away from putting the responsibility on consumers to recycle and look to 'deplastify' their businesses - i.e. reduce their use of single-use plastic in the first place. And this is why, last year, alongside our partners Surfrider Foundation Europe and Zero Waste France, we put nine French companies on legal notice for failing to manage the plastic pollution stemming from their business models. 

This time last year, ClientEarth and partners Surfrider Foundation Europe and Zero Waste France put nine 'Big Food' companies on notice for breaching the French Duty of Vigilance law. This law requires companies to acknowledge and address their impacts on the environment. In our view, the companies were breaching the law by failing to adequately address harms from plastics in their plans.  

A year on, their progress was reviewed, and a report released with the findings by Surfrider Foundation Europe and Zero Waste France. 

The report highlights that although there is more awareness from these companies with regards to the risks associated with plastic, too little action is being taken. It’s a clear signal that businesses urgently need to speed up and scale up efforts to ‘deplastify’. The first step is for companies to assess their use of plastics – including throughout the value chain – and develop a quantified and time-specific plan of action to implement it. 

Plastic pollution threatens the health of our planet and our people – and it is still tracking in the wrong direction. We need these French business leaders show real urgency, ambition and leadership on tackling plastic pollution by both building credible plans and – more importantly – acting on them.