In the last years (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) a series of actions of civil disobedience and boycotts have taken place in France and Switzerland against Holcim-Lafarge, the transnational cement firm. Already in 2020 militants of Extinction Rebellion blocked the sites of Lafarge et Cemex in February to denounce pollution. (9). The more recent actions have been facilitated in the eyes of public opinion by the conviction of Lafarge in the United Sates of its collusion in business with the Islamic State in Syria. Thus, in 30 March 2021 is was reported that police in  Switzerland launched an operation to remove protesters who have been occupying a quarry owned by cement maker Lafarge-Holcim. [1].  This occupation was called La ZAD de la Colline de Mormont [6].

Police approached the camp and asked the activists to leave the site; when their request was refused, they began forcibly removing the activists one by one. Some of the activists threw stones and shot fireworks at officers, who were carrying out a court order to evict them, police said. By midday, 150 activists were cleared from the Mormont site, situated between Lausanne and Yverdon in canton Vaud, police said. They also detained 41 of these for questioning.  The activists first occupied the quarry last October, as a means of protesting plans by Lafarge-Holcim to expand it. The campaigners said they wanted to protect the local ecosystem from environmental damage.

Lafarge-Holcim and the local commune of La Sarraz filed legal proceedings to remove the activists; the police operation follows the rejection of the campaigners’ legal appeals. However, since October the environmental activists have also received  some support in the local area. Last Friday in Lausanne, as the evacuation date approached, around 1,000 people marched in support of the activists. A motion, signed by some 130 cantonal parliamentarians, has also been handed into the Vaud government, giving backing to the occupying movement.

Lafarge-Holcim has said that in terms of its carbon footprint, its Mormont site near the village of Ecéplens is one of the most energy-efficient in Europe. In the meantime, the proposed expansion of the quarry is uncertain. The occupation of the quarry in the Mormont site in Switzerland may be seen as part of a campaign with even greater intensity in France against Lafarge and other cement industries, which activists see as a main enemy because of soil sealing (bétonisation) and because of the energy intensity of the cement industry and it use of domestic or industrial waste as fuel. 

Thus there has been a movement in France in Saint Colomban (Loire-Atlantique) (3) against the sand and gravel quarries belonging to Lafarge and GSM while in December 2022 the cement factory of Bouc-Bel-Air (Bouches-du-Rhône, near Marseilles)  (4) (5) was occupied by 200 activists who proceeded to dismantle a large part of it. These actions by grassroots groups and Extinction Rebellion against quarries and cement factories have been supported by the network Les Soulèvements de la Terre in France (Uprisings of the Earth) (2).  To this must be added the action by Extinction Rebellion activists blocking inJune 2021 the entrance to the Lafarge site in Genneviliers when one hundred activists  occupied the Lafarge cement site. Gennevilliers is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, in the Hauts-de-Seine department of Île-de-France. According to the Twitter account of Extinction Rebellion France, a French offshoot of the network created in Great Britain in 2018, this action aimed to "denounce the artificialization of soils", accused of being "a major factor in the 6th extinction of living things on Earth ". "The construction industry is a disaster!" they summed up. According to the police source, these hundred activists equipped with banners, "prevented heavy goods vehicles and employees from entering or leaving by padlocking the entrances to the site". (7).  Also in June 2021 another skirmish took place  when dozens of Extinction Rebellion protesters invaded a cement-making plant in Paris operated by  LafargeHolcim. The protesters daubed graffiti across the site and hung banners, one of which read: "Build to death".  The protest forced Swiss-headquartered LafargeHolcim to halt operations at the Port de Javel site near the Eiffel Tower and divert trucks to another site.(8).

One could say there is a wave of actions against Holcim - Lafarge because of its quarries of sand and gravel, and also the pollution from cement factories. Four conflicts are considered: Mormont in Switzerland (a quarry), Saint Colomban in Loire-Atlantique in France (also a quarry) , the action in Gennevilliers (Hauts de Seine?, and the the action at the cement factory Bouc-Bel-Air near Marseilles that was invaded by 200 protesters who carried acts of sabotage. The events took place between 2020 and 2023. There is a general felling against "artificialisation des sols et la bétonisation", and in particular against Holcim-Lafarge. It centers both on the quarries and in the cement factories. After the Bouc-Bel-Air action, the activists said that Lafarge-Holcim is one of the biggest producers of CO2 in the country. “Here in Bouc-Bel-Air, the ovens that were targeted, long fed by industrial waste and tyres, are today the symbol of greenwashing [because they burn waste instead of fossil fuels]. Air pollution is considerable and has been repeatedly denounced by the press and local residents. However, the chimneys still spit their venom.” On their side, LafargeHolcim currently has a target to reduce its CO2 intensity in cement to 475kg net CO2/t by 2030.(8).