"We need to deplasticize the food market": the exorbitant weight of the sector in plastic pollution in France

To understand the scale of plastic pollution, experts have often relied on the shocking image of a garbage truck dumping its load of plastic waste into the oceans every minute. Now they can transport the truck to a field. "Global contamination of agricultural soils is (…) greater than that of the oceans and is a major cause for concern" : This is, in fact, one of the main results of a collective scientific expertise on plastics used in agriculture and for food, presented on Friday, May 23.

Led by the French National Institute for Agricultural, Food and Environmental Research (INRAE) and the CNRS, this unprecedented expert assessment mobilized around thirty French and European researchers from different disciplines (toxicology, economics, etc.), who analyzed a corpus of more than 4,500 academic publications and legislative or regulatory texts. It was commissioned in 2021 by the ministries responsible for agriculture, food, and the ecological transition, as well as by the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), in order to draw up a state of knowledge on the uses and impacts on the environment and health of plastics used in the agricultural and food system. The underlying question is: what is their role in the sharp increase in plastic consumption and its corollary, plastic pollution?

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