One French village is still struggling with heaps of rubbish which residents say is causing water pollution and terrible smells.
ADVERTISEMENTTen men are on trial in France this week after allegedly orchestrating a vast waste smuggling operation between Belgium and France.
“We've all come across a heap of rubbish in the countryside, but it's quite rare for it to be of this volume,” says Muriel Ruef, representing the civil parties who have taken them to court.
As shocking photos show, huge piles of household and industrial waste are still heaped up at the entrance to Rédange, a small green village in Moselle on the border with Luxembourg.
In total, almost 10,000 tonnes of waste from Belgium were illegally dumped in northern and eastern France between 2018 and 2021, resulting in an estimated loss of more than €1.5 million. The rubbish, prosecutors say, had been collected by the accused as they posed as waste collectors then dumped in France.
For the first time at a specialised interregional court (Jirs) in Lille this week, ten defendants will be answering for their part in this environmental crime.
"I've come here today to acknowledge my actions, everything that's happened, to pay for my actions and to try to put things right,” says Johnny Demeter, the main defendant in the cross-border waste trafficking trial.
How did the waste smuggling network operate?
Demeter describes himself as a waste trader and broker. But he and his associates are accused of defrauding authorities to simply collect, transport and dump waste in France.
"The suspects took on the appearance of waste managers with all the necessary authorisations to collect, process and deposit waste in dedicated areas," Olivier Hurault, lawyer for the Longwy urban community in France, told reporters.
“Under this guise, once they had collected the waste and had been paid, they deposited it on local authority or private land and got rid of it like that, no more and no less".
Investigators have found that a single organisation is behind these environmental crime scenes. Plaintiffs include local authorities, companies and environmental associations like the France Nature Environment (FNE) federation.
Some of them have filed for fraud, Le Figaro reports, for false documents, usurpation of commercial identity, and unpaid invoices.
It’s far from being a victimless crime as far as the affected areas’ human and non-human residents are concerned.
Daniel Cimarelli, mayor of Rédange, recalls "entire 35-tonne trucks being dumped" on private land in his commune in October 2019. Since then, the hill of debris has deteriorated, causing a stink in summer and, local residents say, trickling into ponds below.
"Before, it was an attack on aesthetics," says Philippe Deschamps, sub-prefect of Thionville, a city in Moselle. "But the main problem lies elsewhere, in terms of the environment, with waste entering the water table".
Environmental waste crime: What’s the bigger picture?
It’s an extraordinary case, but environmental groups say it also reveals a much wider issue with waste management in Europe.
84 million tonnes of packaging waste were produced by Europeans in 2021, according to Eurostat, marking the largest increase in 10 years. While waste from construction sites equates to 70 per cent of the waste produced in France: a whopping 46 million tonnes of waste per year, much of which ends up in illegal dumps.
Public authorities are struggling to find solutions, according to a statement from FNE. “It is therefore on the basis of a structural problem of overproduction of waste that unscrupulous environmental crime can develop,” it adds.
The trial of Demeter and his co-defendants began yesterday (18 December) and continues until 22 December.
