Imagine going to pick mushrooms in the woods and suddenly sinking into a pit full of plastic. That’s what happened in 2008 to a woman walking across land owned by Nestlé Waters near Vittel, France. That fortuitous discovery kicked off a long battle that, almost twenty years later, brought the Swiss mineral water giant to a criminal court.
Since March 23, 2026, Nestlé Waters Supply Est – the French subsidiary of the group – has been on trial at the judicial court of Nancy. The accusations are serious: illegal waste management, abandonment of polluting substances, substantial damage to the environment and, above all, discharge of harmful substances into groundwater with effects on human health, flora and fauna.
The investigation, which lasted three years and was collected in a file of over 2,000 pages, brought to light a reality that many in the Vosges region knew about but which, according to the inhabitants themselves, was surrounded by a “true silence”.
470,000 cubic meters of buried waste
On land owned by Nestlé, more than 3,000 hectares in the catchment that feeds the Vittel, Contrex and Hépar springs, inspectors identified four main sites of illegal storage: Saint-Ouen-lès-Parey, They-sous-Montfort, Contrexéville and Crainvilliers. In total, we are talking about 470,000 cubic meters of waste, including plastic, glass and demolition materials.
At the They-sous-Montfort site alone there is the equivalent of 27 Olympic swimming pools of waste: 100,100 cubic metres, of which 42,400 are just plastic. Large trees had now grown on the piles of waste, but the stability of the ground was only apparent, so much so that walking on it risked suddenly sinking into a pit full of plastic.
The problem of microplastics
The most alarming data concerns microplastic pollution in water. The independent laboratories commissioned by the investigators detected very worrying levels: around the They-sous-Montfort landfill, the concentrations of microplastics in a well were almost 7,000 times higher than normal. But it is the Nancy prosecutor’s office that uses the harshest words, speaking of pollution “on an immeasurable scale”, with “exorbitant” levels in the Hépar and Contrex springs: up to 1.3 million times higher than those detected in the Seine.
Even what was declared by the French Office for Biodiversity leaves no room for doubt: such high concentrations of microplastics in water “can only have harmful effects” on water, fauna, flora and human health.
Decades of silence
What emerges from the investigation is a story of omissions, pressure and connivance. Nestlé claims the landfills date back to before 1992, when it acquired local brands and when waste legislation was almost absent. But the authorities discovered that the company had been aware of these landfills since at least 2015, and only in 2021 – under the pressure of media attention – did it start regularization procedures.
In the meantime, those who had attempted to report had paid a price. A farmer who took journalists to landfill sites was sued by Nestlé for trespassing. A retired doctor, founder of the Eau 88 collective, had to be protected by the gendarmerie after an attempt to set fire to his home was organised, in a WhatsApp chat.
Among the civil parties were France Nature Environnement, the league for the protection of birds (Oiseaux Nature), the Association for the Protection of the Valleys and UFC-Que Choisir. The mayor of Saint-Ouen-lès-Parey – the only municipality in the area which, according to the investigation, does not benefit from taxes or subsidies from Nestlé – also filed a complaint on behalf of his municipality.
Nestlé’s reply
The Swiss group disputes the accusations. His lawyers have already obtained, on the same day the trial opened, the cancellation of some searches due to procedural defects. The company communication states that 7 of the 9 sites identified have already been reclaimed and returned to their natural state, and questions the reliability of the analyzes on microplastics, claiming that the samples may have been contaminated during the collection and conservation procedure.
A spokeswoman for Nestlé Waters France said:
Today, the majority of the sites have already been cleaned up by Nestlé Waters and we are awaiting feedback from the environmental authorities to specify the best management option for the remaining sites. No waste discharges were carried out by Nestlé Waters between 2021 and 2024.
Sources: Le Monde / Reporterre / Nestlé
