Last week, the giant round of brainstorming and negotiation on the future direction and strength of France’s commitment to environment-friendly policies finally came to an end in Paris.

The effort has been poignantly coined “Grenelle de l’Environnement”, as Grenelle is the prime minister’s residence most well-known for having been the site where the social revolution of May 1968 reached its denouement.

The nexus of all the meetings was a speech by president Nicolas Sarkozy in front of the freshly Nobel-Peace-Prized failed US presidency candidate Al Gore - a fine comeback by surely the first man in history who ever lost out to George Bush (or did he?). In his own inimitable way, Monsieur Sarkozy laid down the line of action that France was willing and able to take to make things better for the good of our little blue planet. None of them would surprise you too much - think promises such as massive investment in the development of rail freight options, and the adaptation and modernisation of French ports to fit in with the current globalisation of the shipping industry.

The agenda and division of responsibilities to invest were not developed in the president’s speech. Nobody was any clearer as to how any of these altruistic beliefs were to coincide with world-changing actions. Maybe that is mainly because it is extremely hard to find the money in a budget to fulfil the pledges that transform themselves from heartfelt promises into a political wish list, then into a string of forgotten statements, and finally into yesterday’s fish and chip paper, as the days, weeks and months go by.

A closer look to the results of the talking nevertheless shows one thing: the lobbying teams must have had quite a lot to do in a relatively short space of time, and obviously they did it well. For example, in the final draft of the final report, the road transport industry somehow escaped from being hit with additional taxes, even though it was pointedly named as the main contributor to the CO2 bill. Additionally, and no less surprisingly in the scheme of things, not a word was mentioned about waste management.

Going green is certainly a difficult task, but it is by no means an impossible dream. At Rungis, the market is following a long-term policy and has already seen positive results. In 2006, some 600,000 Kw/h of electricity was saved by newly introduced efficiency measures, which also brought water consumption down by 1.7 per cent, and saw 130,000t of waste incinerated to generate 200,000 megawatts a year for the surrounding towns.

This is one area where I really think Rungis can hold a candle to anyone.