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Plastic ball pollution, also known as "mermaid's tears", continues to spread across the Atlantic coastline.
In recent days, these industrial plastic granules (GPI), which are the basis for the manufacture of many plastic products, have been found on the beaches of Vendée, Finistère or Loire-Atlantique.
In this department, several municipalities, like Pornic, have already been affected.
A new one has just been added to the list: Pornichet.
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On Wednesday, agents of this City in charge of cleanliness, discovered GPI on the beach of the Booksellers.
As of Monday, a resident of the sector had alerted
Le Figaro
of such pollution in this place.
What anger the mayor, Jean-Claude Pelleteur.
Like some of his colleagues, he decided to file a complaint against X in the face of this attack on the environment and biodiversity.
"It's sad
," he repeats.
Faced with an
"external pollution"
described as
"insidious"
because not visible to the naked eye, he feels helpless.
“This undermines our efforts to preserve the quality of our beaches and our bathing waters”
, he regrets, citing the Blue Flag label that his town has received consecutively for the past four years.
State sues
Especially since he is convinced, the phenomenon is far from over:
“We will find others”
.
Determined that
"this does not happen again"
, he calls for better regulation on the subject.
Drawing a parallel with the degassing of oil tankers which became less frequent after the sinking of the Erika, he hopes that a
"strengthening of the legislation"
could change the situation.
“France alone will not succeed.
This must be done, at least, at European level, ”
claims this unlabeled city councilor.
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A message which it seems has already been heard by the French authorities.
On Tuesday, the Secretary of State for the Sea, Hervé Berville, 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”.
At the same time, he confirmed that the State had lodged a complaint against X with the public prosecutor of Brest following this pollution.
A probable “common origin”
If the exact source of this GPI pollution on the Atlantic coast is, for the moment, impossible to determine, analyzes have confirmed its probable
“common origin”
.
In a report published Tuesday evening, the Center for Documentation, Research and Experimentation on Accidental Water Pollution (Cedre), said that the plastic balls found on several beaches had a similar composition and characteristics.
The data indicate in particular a very predominant presence of polyethylene in the granules, up to 90%.
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If the pollution caused by GPIs is
"little visible"
, it is
"massive",
alerted a few days ago to Le
Figaro,
Lucie Padovani, advocacy officer on the subject of aquatic waste within the Surfrider association.
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”
