Journalists

Paris-Plages operation has been organized by the Mairie de Paris since 2002. It gives tourists and city's inhabitants the opportunity to benefit from beaches and leisure.
Lafarge is partner of the operation for 7 years: the Group supplies materials needed to create the beaches and organizes specific animations.

This year, the Group participates in 3 important actions:

• Lafarge delivers by river banks the 2,000 tons of sand needed to create the beaches on the banks, from the Sandrancourt quarry.
• It is sponsoring children's areas at the Georges Pompidou expressway and the La Villette basin. The Group is offering a giant puzzle on the theme of the biodiversity, in terms of both animal and plant life, being developed in quarries.
• The Group is decorating the pedestrianized Georges Pompidou expressway with Artevia® decorative concrete slabs, which play on color, pattern and texture and demonstrate all the material's esthetic possibilities in decorating the city and homes.

The presence of the Seine, with its navigable waterways, enables aggregates mined from the Lafarge quarries in the Paris Basin to be distributed by river.
The 2,000 tons of sand destined for the Paris-Plages operation were delivered in a single river convoy, avoiding the equivalent of 100 trucks.

Lafarge favors waterways for the shipment of its materials wherever possible and as a result owns the largest private river fleet in France, comprising 7 push tugs and 140 barges.
Each year more than 12 million tons of aggregates (sand, crushed stone and gravel) and more than five million m3 of concrete are consumed in the Ile-de-France region. The use of river transport relieves the Île-de-France's roads of 600,000 trucks each year.
By doing this, Lafarge chooses an ecological, reliable, economical and punctual shipping method, without generating any noise pollution or clogging up the roads.

Lafarge also designs its cement plants and sand ports to completely blend into the urban landscape:

• Lafarge is a signatory to the "Sable en Seine 2" charter. This commitment measures efforts made to preserve a high quality environment for the benefit of the public.
• Aggregates and concretes facilities are audited each year by Ecopass, a certification body recognizing sustainability initiatives, appointed to carry out the audits required under the charter. The criteria cover urban and landscape integration, the cleanliness and upkeep of sites, regulatory compliance, the prevention and treatment of pollution and environmental damage.

Lafarge commits itself in sustainability and biodiversity. The Group assigns each of its quarries a rehabilitation plan. Both during and after their operation, these sustainably managed sites are beacons of biodiversity due to the specific animal and plant life which develops there.

For instance, the Sandrancourt quarry (Yvelines, France), which supplies the 2,000 tons of sand for the Paris-Plages operation, is covered by a comprehensive development plan, including:

• the creation of a pleasure port with a capacity of 200 moorings at Ilon,
• more than 250 acres of tree planting,
• and 200 acres of prairies, lawns, moors and wetland.

Lafarge has also contributed to the 85-acre "Domaine Régional de Flicourt" nature reserve, where more than 300 species of plants have been recorded along with 160 species of birds, 43 of which are noteworthy and 10 of which are included on the French red list of endangered species.

Find out, in video, the Group's environmental commitment!