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In recent weeks, industrial plastic granules (GPI) have washed up on the beaches of Vendée, Finistère or Loire-Atlantique.
Pollution denounced by elected officials and communities who have filed a complaint against X. Faced with this attack on the environment and biodiversity, a citizen mobilization to clean up the beaches, at the instigation of the Surfrider association, took place last Saturday to pick up these small objects of less than five millimeters.
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At the same time, experts from the Center for Documentation, Research and Experimentation on Accidental Water Pollution (Cedre) had been asked by the Departmental Directorate of Territories and the Sea (DDTM) of Loire-Atlantique to collect on several beaches these plastic microbeads and analyze them.
They have just made a first report on Tuesday evening.
According to them, the plastic balls found in large numbers on the Atlantic coast would have a similar composition and characteristics.
Strong presence of polyethylene
“The analyzes do not make it possible to exclude a common origin of the GPIs for the majority white and translucent GPIs in the samples taken”
, indicates Nicolas Tamic, assistant to the director of Cedre, an organization based in Brest.
According to the report, the analyzes indicate a very majority presence of polyethylene in the granules, up to 90%, and do not show
“any major difference in the characteristics of the GPIs taken from the sites visited”
.
These plastic pellets of less than 5 mm also remained for a short time in the marine environment, according to the same source.
The State files a complaint in turn
On Tuesday, the State sent a complaint against X to the Brest public prosecutor, said the Secretary of State for the Sea, Hervé Berville.
The latter also announced
“having launched, on behalf of France, a request to make the loss of containers by ships a priority area of work for the International Maritime Organization”
.
On the other hand, Cedre specifies that it is
“impossible to determine the origin of the arrivals”
, the
“modeling of reverse drifts”
not making it possible to indicate
“a common maritime origin”
.
If the hypothesis of the fall of a container remains possible, there is therefore nothing to confirm it.
“It's the same type of pollutant but there can be several sources.
We can't say: it comes from the same bag”
, deciphers Nicolas Tamic.
The microbeads could thus have escaped from a container that fell into the sea and from a bag that fell from a truck.
“Massive” pollution
Used as a raw material by the plastics industry, GPIs are packaged in 25-kilo bags (containing one million balls each) and are used in the manufacture of most plastic objects, from car bumpers to salad bowls.
If the pollution caused by the GPI is
"little visible"
, it is
"massive",
alerted to
Figaro,
Lucie Padovani, in charge of advocacy on the subject of aquatic waste within the Surfrider association.
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"This represents 150,000 tonnes per year across the European Union,"
she said.
According to this specialist in the subject, GPI pollution is
“diffuse”
because it is transported by the water cycle and sometimes ingested by marine animals.
It can therefore
ultimately
“ find itself
on our plates”
