One month after its launch there are reports that Paris' innovative car rental scheme has been hit by vandalism problems.

"/> One month after its launch there are reports that Paris' innovative car rental scheme has been hit by vandalism problems.

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Car rental scheme hit by vandalism

One month after its launch there are reports that Paris' innovative car rental scheme has been hit by vandalism problems.

Published: 2 January 2012 09:56 CET

Car rental scheme hit by vandalism

Francisco Gonzalez

Sunday’s Journal du Dimanche newspaper reported that one quarter of the 200 cars have had to be withdrawn as a result of vandalism and break downs, leaving just 150 cars in circulation.

The car scheme, known as Autolib’, was launched at the start of December.

Users can pay €10 ($13) for a day’s subscription or €15 ($19) for a week to use the electric cars. Each user then pays around €7 for each half hour of use.

Around 6,000 people have signed up to use the scheme.

The four-seater cars were designed and manufactured by Italian designer Pininfarina and have a range of up to 250 kilometres between recharging.

The scheme was designed to help cut pollution and traffic in Paris.

“We want to persuade people to shift from the concept of owning a car to that of using a car,” Autolib’ general manager Morald Chibout told Reuters.

The €235 million project was launched by Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë and a total of 3,000 cars are planned at more than 1,000 stations by the end of 2012.

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Greenpeace sounds alarm over Spain's 'poisonous mega farms'

Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of Murcia Mar Menor saltwater lagoon. Photo: JOSEP LAGO / AFP

The number of farm animals raised in Spain has jumped by more than a third since 2015 to around 560 million in 2020, it said in the report entitled “Mega farms, poison for rural Spain”.

This “excessive and uncontrolled expansion of industrial animal farming” has had a “serious impact on water pollution from nitrates”, it said.

Three-quarters of Spain’s water tables have seen pollution from nitrates increase between 2016 and 2019, the report said citing Spanish government figures.

Nearly 29 percent of the country’s water tables had more than the amount of nitrate considered safe for drinking, according to a survey carried out by Greenpeace across Spain between April and September.

The environmental group said the government was not doing enough.

It pointed out that the amount of land deemed an “area vulnerable to nitrates” has risen to 12 million hectares in 2021, or 24 percent of Spain’s land mass, from around eight million hectares a decade ago, yet industrial farming has continued to grow.

“It is paradoxical to declare more and more areas vulnerable to nitrates”, but at the same time allow a “disproportionate rise” in the number of livestock on farms, Greenpeace said.

Pollution from hundreds of intensive pig farms played a major role in the collapse of one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons, the Mar Menor in Spain’s southeast, according to a media investigation published earlier this week.

Scientists blamed decades of nitrate-laden runoffs for triggering vast blooms of algae that had depleted the water of the lagoon of oxygen, leaving fish suffocating underwater.

Two environmental groups submitted a formal complaint in early October to the European Union over Spain’s failure to protect the lagoon.

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