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On the road, more than one in four French people (27%) throw their rubbish out of the car window, according to an Ipsos survey published on Thursday, showing that young drivers are particularly concerned.
Among motorists, 27% admit that they “always throw their rubbish out of their car window on holiday roads”, according to the study carried out for the tenth consecutive year by Ipsos for the Vinci Autoroutes Foundation.
The percentage even reaches 40% among those under 35.
Organic waste – apple cores and stones etc. – paper, tissues, packaging, plastic bottles or cans, as well as cigarette butts are thus emptied out of the windows.
Regarding cigarette butts, 24% of smokers admit to throwing them out of the window, even though “cigarette butts, along with other waste, will take a long time to degrade and will be ingested by wildlife,” the Foundation’s general delegate, Bernadette Moreau, laments to AFP.
This highlights the “disappointing results” of this study: the percentage has stagnated for the third consecutive year, after a downward trend in previous years.
However, the vast majority of respondents, 87%, say they are “concerned about environmental issues”, according to the survey.
And the effort required seems limited, underlines Ms. Moreau: “we are not obliged to keep the waste for the whole journey, there are bins at each motorway service station.”
The proportion of motorists aware of the risks has fallen by six to ten percentage points over a year, depending on the risks: water and soil pollution, damage to biodiversity, fires, accidents involving motorway personnel or other users.
One possible explanation is that the car “makes us forget the collective dimension of driving”, explains the general delegate of the Foundation, also behind a barometer of responsible driving which highlighted “egocentrism” behind the wheel in 2024.
The survey was conducted online from May 23 to 28, on a sample of 2,200 people, representative of the French population aged 16 to 75, using the quota method.
It is published two days before a Saturday classified as red in the sense of holiday departures.
Slideshow: Teach your children to preserve the environment while having fun