Drivers who regularly use the Ile-de-France network have inevitably seen these signs installed along the Ile-de-France highways: we see a heap of garbage bags, plastic bottles and soda cans abandoned along the road. pavement, and then this message displayed in big white letters: “Are you doing this at home? ". Despite these recurring campaigns calling for no littering in nature, fifteen tonnes of litter are collected every day along French highways.
A figure that is all the more worrying as bad habits seem to be well established. According to a survey carried out by the Vinci Autoroutes foundation, which we are revealing to you, nearly one in three French people admits "throwing waste out of the window of their car on the road to vacation". In this period of the Covid-19 epidemic, 5% even admit that they have already thrown or lost a mask on the public road! Hence the message of the campaign disseminated by the foundation from today on social networks: "hold back"
Masks are on the face ... or in the trash
The abandonment of used disposable masks is no longer a phenomenon confined to city sidewalks. Motorway officers also pick them up at rest areas and sometimes along traffic lanes. According to the survey, up to 11% of people under 25 recognize that they have ever thrown away or lost their protection.
"It is astonishing that young people are not more exemplary in this area because it is in this age group that they are often the most involved in the protection of the planet, underlines Bernadette Moreau, General Delegate of the Foundation. Vinci Highway. Not only to throw a mask is to ignore the environmental impact of this gesture but it is to run a health risk to those who will pick it up ”. It is estimated that a surgical-type mask will take 300 to 400 years to decompose in nature.
Well-established bad habits ...
In the six years that the Vinci Autoroutes Foundation has been carrying out this survey, the behavior of motorists has changed very little, in particular with regard to the throwing of waste on public roads practiced by 38% of French people! "I think that this incivism is more of an impulsive and thoughtless gesture than an assumed desire to dirty because they admit that they are not very proud of it," notes Bernadette Moreau. 86% feel guilty when they leave litter in the street, in nature or out of their car window ”.
... and a lot of bad faith
When we ask them why they did it, then bad faith reappears: 82% justify their action by the absence of trash cans nearby or by trash cans that are too full. “However, on the motorway, there are service areas with garbage cans every fifteen kilometers,” explains Bernadette Moreau. But 41% admit they don't want to keep the trash with them to put it in the trash later. And 15% even think that the taxes they pay should be used to collect their litter!
The scourge of cigarette ends
12% of smokers admit that they throw their butt out the window of their car and 13% that they do so on the sidewalk or in the gutter, or more than a third of French smokers. "Given the heat that currently reigns in France and the drought, throwing a cigarette butt out the window on the motorway or in the embankments along the traffic lanes is to take the risk of setting off fires" , warns Bernadette Moreau. And the Vinci Autoroutes foundation reminds that 95% of fires are of human origin and half are due to recklessness.
Higher fines
While 39% of French people think that the most effective method to fight against illegal dumping is to increase fines, a decree provides for increasing the fine from 68 euros to 135 euros for throwing waste on the track public.
