Rodolphe Saadé, chairman and chief executive of CMA CGM, has announced that the group will no longer be transporting any plastic waste aboard its ships.
Saade made the announcement during the One Ocean Summit, organised by French president Emmanuel Macron.
The move will be effective from 1 June 2022, with Saade noting that it showed CMA CGM's continued commitment to protecting the environment and conserving biodiversity.
With the decision that it would no longer transport plastic waste on board its ships, the logistics company said would prevent that type of waste from being exported to destinations where sorting, recycling or recovery cannot be assured.
'With this decision, the CMA CGM Group is stepping up its efforts to make conserving biodiversity one of the priorities of its CSR policy and to develop trade that is more responsible and fair for everyone and for the planet,' it stated.
In his address, Saadé also announced that the group would host one of the two sites of the French Institute for Decarbonation at Tangram, its major innovation and training centre due to open in Marseille in 2023.
CMA CGM said that every year around 10m tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the sea.
'Unless action is taken, that figure is set to triple over the next 20 years to reach 29m tonnes per year, which will cause irreversible damage to marine ecosystems, fauna and flora.
'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.'
