Rodolphe Saadé, Chairman and CEO of the CMA CGM Group, announced that the Group would no longer be transporting any plastic scrap aboard its ships starting June 1, 2022. He made the announcement during his speech at the One Ocean Summit organised by Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic. The event was held 9-11 February.

With this important decision, the Group said it continues to demonstrate its commitment to protecting the environment and conserving biodiversity.

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

The shipping line said every year, around 10 million tons of plastic waste end up in the sea and unless action is taken the figure is set to triple over the next two decades that will cause damage to marine ecosystems. The causes for the pollution include open-air storage and the absence of processing infrastructure for plastic waste that does not actively get recycled or reused.

The Basel Action Network (BAN) said the Group’s move is in response to a call by BAN, The Last Beach Cleanup and 50 other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in their  Global Shipping Lines Campaign launched a year ago. They had called on the world's largest shipping lines, Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk, CMA CGM, MSC, Hamburg Sud, Hyundai Merchant Marine, Evergreen, COSCO, and Orient Shipping, to "prove their sustainability commitments and keep their promises to protect the marine and terrestrial environment by pledging not to transport plastic waste to countries that are ill-equipped to handle it in an environmentally sound manner."

CMA CGM is the first of the shipping lines contacted to announce that it will put a complete stop to plastic scrap shipments.