CMA CGM drops plastic from its container ships, confirms Rodolphe Saadé

During the One Ocean Summit organised by Emmanuel Macron, president of the French Republic, the chairman and CEO of the CMA CGM Group, Rodolphe Saadé announced that its company would no longer be transporting any plastic waste aboard its ships, effective from 1 June 2022.

CMA CGM noted in a statement that every year, around 10 million tons of plastic waste end up in the sea and without any action, that figure is set to triple over the next 20 years to reach 29 million tons per year. The causes of this pollution include open-air storage and the absence of processing infrastructure for plastic waste that does not actively get recycled or reused, according to the French shipping company.

With the decision that it will no longer transport plastic waste on board its ships, CMA CGM said it “will prevent this type of waste from being exported to destinations where sorting, recycling or recovery cannot be assured.”

CMA CGM Group added it will accelerate its efforts to make conserving biodiversity one of the priorities of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy.

Saadé also said that the French company will host one of the two sites of the French Institute for Decarbonation at Tangram, the Group’s major innovation and training center due to open in Marseille in 2023.