“CLEAN HOLIDAYS”: THE INDUSTRIAL ORIGINS OF A CAMPAIGN TO CLEAN UP FRENCH BEACHES IN THE 1970s

Abstract

This article retraces the genesis of the “Clean Holidays” campaign, launched in July 1971 by Progrès et Environnement, a consortium of packaging, food and beverage manufacturers that had been founded six months earlier by Antoine Riboud. These companies actively promoted single-use packaging after the Second World War and this, in turn, led to the proliferation of packaging waste. With this summer initiative, they sought to address the problem of such litter polluting beaches across France. Drawing on corporate archives, the article examines the underlying tension between the consortium’s professed commitment to the “public good” and its private interests. The “Clean Holidays” initiative was an attempt by the industries concerned to address two threatening issues that were emerging. One was the increased criticism of packaging waste and the other was the prospect that this issue would find itself on the political agenda. Business leaders in these industries were opposed to attempts to reduce single-use packaging and the creation of Progrès et Environnement was a way to depoliticize the debate. The “Clean Holidays” campaign linked the problem of littering to individual incivility rather than to the economic system that organizes the (over)production of waste. In a context of mass expansion of summer tourism, the campaign focused on the need for holidaymakers on beaches across the country to behave in a “cleaner” manner. In addition, by selling polyethylene trash bags to local authorities as part of the initiative, the consortium also managed to reposition plastic as an ally of beach cleanliness.