Sharon Lavigne, one of the six winners of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize, is fighting to protect her community from plastics corporations.
Pollution
Paris to ban old and polluting cars
Commercial vehicles produced before 1997 won’t be allowed in the streets of Paris. The measure, which will come into force on 1 July, is intended to reduce air pollution in the French capital.
In the shade of the Tour Eiffel people don’t want to have to do with black clouds emitted by rusty exhaust pipes and polluting emissions. From 1 July Paris will banish cars made before 1997 strengthening the policy of modernisation of the capital’s car fleet and smog reduction. In the past, thanks to this policy, particularly low speed limits and permanent bans have been imposed locally, for example in the Champs-Élysées, and diesel cars will be completely banned by 2020.
Cars meeting Euro 0 and Euro 1 standards will be banned
More modern cars are cleaner cars. This is particularly true if we consider that the European emission standards have been encouraging car manufacturers from 1991 to today to drastically reduce the polluting emissions of their vehicles, mostly carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide. This fact convinced Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and the French Environment Ministry led by Ségolène Royal – a candidate for Presidency in 2007 – to ban cars and commercial vehicles produced before 1997. This ban will disallow cars that don’t comply with the Euro 2 regulation, which came into force in 1997.
Daily ban and special stickers
The measure adopted by the city of Paris is not revolutionary as the Netherlands’ proposal to ban vehicles with traditional engines by 2030 or Norway’s provision to exclusively use electric cars by 2025. But it has something more than the other sustainable projects: concreteness. According to the daily Les Echos, indeed, the ban will come into force on 1 July and will be implemented from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. except for weekends. And that’s not all. The cars that will run in the streets of the Ville Lumière must also have specific stickers on the windscreen, similar to the Swiss highway tickets, that certify the compliance with one of the six European standards for emissions.
Paris also bans motorcycles made before 1999
Commercial cars and vehicles made before 1997 will be banned with no exceptions. Motorcycles created before 1 June 1999 will also fall under this measure, which impose a fine of 35 euros to rule-breakers in the first period, and then 68 euros. Fines will be given from 1 October. This is a revolution for Paris that, especially in the last five years, has had record-breaking levels of air pollution and limited traffic according to even and odd numbers of license plates. From 1 July something could change.
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