10 ♦ FRENCH NEWS
www.thebugle.eu ○ THE BUGLE ○ OCTOBER 2020
Growing anger over The human hair cleaning the oceans empty food packaging
coiffeurs-justes.fr
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ne enterprising hairdresser in southern France is hoping to put the country's leftover locks to work in the fight against sea pollution. The innovative recycling scheme is the work of Thierry Gras, founder of Coiffeurs Justes - Fair Hairdressers - which now has 40 tonnes of human hair at its warehouse in Brignoles, near Marseille, waiting to be processed. The hair is stuffed into nylon stockings which are then floated in the sea to mop up oil pollution. “Hair is lipophilic, which means it absorbs fats and hydrocarbons,” explained Gras. After a successful trial in the nearby port of Cavalaire-sur-Mer, the foundation is now waiting for the green light from labour inspectors and anti-pollution officials before beginning large-scale production of the tubes later this year. Despite the fact that hair can also be used as fertiliser, insulation material, concrete reinforcement or in water filtration, Gras was shocked to discover when he became a hairdresser that there was no established recycling facility for hair waste. He subsequently came up with the idea of creating hair-filled oil absorbers, and in 2015 founded his association. Today he has 3,300 hair
salons contributing to the scheme. At the Brignoles warehouse thousands of paper bags, each containing two kilograms of clippings, have been collected from participating hairdressers from all over France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The bags are then sent to another site a few streets away, where formerly unemployed people and school dropouts are paid to make the absorbent tubes. Gras plans to reinvest half of the sale price of the tubes in the employment centre. The forearm-length tubes will be sold for €9 each and can absorb up to eight times their own weight in oil. With the average hairdresser generating 29 kilograms of hair a year - most of which currently ends up in the bin - the scheme is a cheap and efficient way of turning a natural waste product into one that can help fight pollution.
“The tubes can be used in case of a serious oil spill, such as the one in Mauritius recently, but the idea here is to remove micro-pollution on a continuous basis,” Gras explained. In Cavalaire, a dozen tubes are already in use, serving as a pilot for the project, and Philippe Leonelli, the mayor of the seaside town and CEO of its port, is happy to have a new method for soaking up the oil leaked from the engines of some 1,100 boats docked in the port. “The traditional method uses large sponges made from polymer, products that are not reusable and which we discard after use,” the mayor said. The hair tubes are washable and can be reused as many as ten times. “We are all in search of reusable methods so as not to overburden our territory and our land.” Several river and ocean ports in France have already shown an interest in purchasing the tubes. ■
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consumer group has accused seven major brands of “food fraud” over the amount of empty space within their packaging. The European NGO Foodwatch said products made by Lipton, Léa Nature, Sojasun, Monoprix, Barilla, Carrefour and Leclerc were “full of nothing” and intended to dupe customers into thinking they were buying more food than was actually there. Monoprix came under specific fire for its spice jars, which use a large label at the top to hide the fact that they are more than one quarter empty. “It’s all about the judicious positioning of the label and the opacity of the cap,” Foodwatch said in its report, which also highlights packets of cereals and quinoa only 40% filled, or diced salmon whose packaging contained just 32% fish. “As a consumer, you can imagine yourself in the salmon section. You have all these slices of salmon that do not go to the end of the packaging, but as it is mostly cardboard, you do not see too much,” explained Camille Dorioz, campaign manager of the NGO. “It’s a competition for who can have the largest packaging on the shelf to show his product to the consumer.” “After complaints from several consumers, we went to check supermarkets and compared
products between them. Almost all the shelves were affected by this excess packaging and these products sold ‘full of emptiness’. Offering useless packaging is not illegal, but it’s time to end these abusive practices.” The NGO says companies are exploiting a “grey area of regulation”, adding that European law clearly states that packaging and marketing practices must not be deliberately misleading. “We consider oversized packaging to be illegitimate because it is deliberately intended to mislead the consumer.” In order to highlight the problem and put more pressure on the industry to change their ways, Foodwatch have launched an online petition which will be sent to the CEOs of the companies highlighted in the study. “We're launching this petition not only to force these companies to change their practices, but to alert the manufacturers of all brands that consumers have had enough. It’s not just about misleading customers – who feel they’ve been had after buying a large product with very little contents – but the environmental repercussions are also unacceptable,” Dorioz said. According to Forbes Insight, as much as 25% of all international freight is empty space inside packaging. That is the equivalent of 60 million empty containers being shipped around the world each year. ■
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egendary French actor, comedian and voice-over artist Roger Carel has died at the age of 93. He was arguably the most famous voice-over artist in French cinema history and will be well remembered as the voice of Asterix the Gaul and Mickey Mouse as well as Star Wars’ C-3PO, Winnie the Pooh, Kermit the Frog and Kaa from the Jungle Book. For those of a certain age, he was also the French voice of Benny Hill. While most English speakers will watch relatively few films or programmes in a foreign language, dubbing remains a huge part of the industry internationally. The top voice-over artists will typically be used to voice the same actor in different films and can build a following in their own right and achieve significant popularity. Carel began his career in theatre and radio dramas, where his unique voice and mischievous tone quickly led to success. His talents opened the door to the business of dubbing, the work he became best known for and he would go on to work as a voice-over artist well into his eighties. “My magic potion recipe for staying young is this marvellous job that has kept me going... marvellously,” he said when finally retiring in 2013 after receiving the prestigious Henri-Langlois Award. “I had the chance to play a lot: theatre, TV, dub-
bing. When you're happy, you don't age so quickly.” “Being a voice actor is the opposite of acting. You have to forget what you can do. There is no question, unlike in the theatre or the cinema, of adapting a role to your measure. You must honestly reproduce the work of another. I have always treated it like a game.” Carel was undoubtedly the biggest name in French dubbing history and with the rise of streaming platforms and changing viewing habits, many believe his fame will never be eclipsed. Following a change in the law in 1949 which required any film released in French cinemas to be dubbed in studios located in France, an industry was born. In the modern world, however, many people watch films online and the rise of streaming services such as Netflix has led to a significant move towards subtitling rather than dubbing. The sheer volume of international content now available online makes dubbing a slow and expensive option compared to subtitling, and evidence appears to suggest that the public, particularly the younger generations, are becoming more and more used to watching subtitled programmes and films. While the country may never again see another Roger Carel, his voice will remain iconic to legions of French film fans. ■
credit: Stéphane Cardinale / Corbis
France loses voice of Asterix and Mickey Mouse
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