Residents of Brussels, Belgium, united on Monday to call for an end to visual pollution in their city, following in the footsteps of Grenoble and other French cities that did the same.
“Advertising has a negative impact on citizens’ health, well-being and poverty by driving them into debt. “It has a negative impact on environmental pollution because advertising primarily suggests excessive consumption,” emphasized David Petit from the “Bruxelles sans pub” collective to the Belgian Radio and Television of the French Community (RTBF).
Earlier in the week, the collective presented a petition against advertising in public spaces to the Brussels Parliament on Monday, which, according to Belgian media, reached the 1,000 necessary endorsements in less than two days last September, according to Belgian media.
Because, according to the movement's spokesman, the city would get more from removing advertising from its public spaces, especially by improving the health of consumers, who are often bombarded by unhealthy products, and the environment, which suffers on several levels.
The petition specifically calls out “unnecessary energy consumption,” but also mass advertising campaigns that promote excessive consumption of environmentally harmful goods.
“Politicians accept it because they see short-term fiscal interest in it […] But in the long run the state loses money,” he emphasized.
Since 2022, the city of Grenoble in France has tightened the noose around private companies that still display visible advertising from public spaces in order to once and for all enforce the 2015 law to reduce visual pollution with fines, Le Parisien reported at that time.
“Reducing or eliminating advertising approved and monetized by authorities is a very simple measure […] The city of Grenoble in France has abolished advertising in public spaces and this has had no negative impact on its budget,” continued David Petit.
Other French cities, including Lyon and Marseille, have taken measures in this direction to reduce digital advertising in the city center. The Lyon subway should remove screens in the subway from 2024, the city announced last July, according to Lyon Capitale.