Four years ago, in 2019, Jessica Guiot Dautruche found this landfill while taking a stroll in Rédange, France. Within just a few days, she witnessed a slew of lorries from Belgium, come to the small parcel of private land and illegally dump almost 250 tonnes of litter.
“Nothing has changed since October 2019. Everything is still there”, she says in despair.
Earth, rubble, plastic waste, pots of paints, household products, food… When our colleagues from RTL Infos visited the place in 2019, this enormous landfill created a mountain of smelling and rotting litter.
This could very well have a disastrous effect on the local fauna and the rivers that run into the neighbouring Luxembourg. The landfill is located about 100 metres from a pond that flows into a river that flows into the Alzette in Luxembourg.
The mountain of trash, has indeed not vanished - on the contrary, it has even grown. More people came to illegally dump their litter. Jessica points to a pile that seemingly came from works within a house. “Someone came to dump the contents of an entire van.”
To hinder their access to the site, the old barrier, which was hardly a deterrent, has been replaced by a fixed guardrail, which only lets walkers through... and “small litterers” who, unfortunately, don’t hesitate to throw their rubbish into the pile again and again.
Although the case received a lot of media attention and uncovered a waste traffic on an international scale, with foreign companies (particularly Belgian) displaying “mafia-like behaviour”. Similar unauthorised landfills were found all over the north of the Lorraine region in France, in Hussigny-Godbrange, Haucourt-Moulaine, or Audun-le-Tiche. Many elected politicians rushed to the scene and promised to put an end to it.
For years the Citizens’ collective “j’aime ma forêt” (en: I love my forest), that Jessica is a part of, has again and again reached out to local authorities to contain the landfill. But also to create real change, like for example having more border controls that pertain to waste issues.
A thorough investigation from the local french authorities concluded in a letter published in February of 2020 that the transport company Jost Group had been allegedly misled by another company, Mondial Services, which recovers and treats waste from Belgian private individuals and professionals”. Since then, the people responsible for the illegal dumping have been identified and searches have been carried out, but no lorries have come to collect the waste.
But the Citizens’ collective is not giving up. They’ve contacted numerous players: sub-prefects and prefects, the Ministry of the Environment in Belgium and France, departmental and regional presidents, the Belgian public prosecutor, environmental protection associations, ... They’ve received many replies, but few were positive to their request.
France and Belgium continue to pass on the blame on the Rédange issue. For example the Flemish agency for waste management wrote in February 2023 that its on the French authorities to properly stock the waste that is currently left with no supervision.
Jessica thinks that the high costs of cleaning these landfills might play a part in this. “In Haucourt-Moulaine, they received a quote of almost a million euros to remove 550 tonnes of rubbish. Here it’s estimated to cost between 180k and 230k euros.”
Not all is lost on the side of the collective. They followed many leads and transmitted the case to many European MP’s but also to the “national cross-border waste transfer hub”. A hearing is scheduled for the end of August and the case should be raised at the end of December 2023. A hearing that will carry even more weight as a number of organisations join the case as civil parties. This could lead to measures being taken to remove the “ugly scar” running through the village of Rédange.
Jessica states that her collective will not let go of the case. But she worries that since it has been going on for such a long time that the issue may be forgotten.
