Several tons of toxic waste were dumped right in front of the French Ministry of the Environment by ZEA activists.
Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the operation.
Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the operation.
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00:00This action has just been organized in front of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Solidarity.
00:30This action has just been organized in front of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Solidarity.
00:36This action has just been organized in front of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Solidarity.
00:44We are at the Gardane factory.
00:46We have trains that come directly from Fas-sur-Mer,
00:50which are loaded in BOXXX, which comes from Guinea, in Africa.
00:56A white part is extracted, which is called aluminum,
00:59and all the red part that remains, all the waste, is what we call red mud.
01:17We can see it, but we still have to get closer.
01:20It is through these pipes that the red mud goes up,
01:22and that it goes in the different basins, in the different storages.
01:26All the red mud goes through here,
01:29and is partly found in the press filter to be dehydrated,
01:32so that the liquid part is separated from the solid part.
01:34The solid part is stored in discharges here,
01:37in the open air, where everyone can enter, like us for example.
01:41And the liquid part goes back into a pipe that goes in the Mediterranean Sea,
01:45in the Cassis Canyon, it is off the coast of the Caloogues de Cassis.
01:48Everything you are walking on is red mud.
01:51In Guinea, there are places where they filled 40 to 50 meters of red mud balloons.
01:57And it is waste that is toxic,
01:59since it is loaded with heavy metals and with reinforced natural radioactivity.
02:03So here we have the impression of walking in the countryside.
02:05There are a lot of people who come here, who ride bikes, who go for walks.
02:08There is no distinctive sign, and we are on a dangerous discharge.
02:21The industry is right there, it is really very close.
02:24The press filter, etc., everything is there.
02:27So we are going to start installing the gaiters,
02:30precisely to be sure that we can go and do our sampling.
02:43It can be either simple walkers,
02:46or it can be a group of people.
02:49We are waiting for a visual confirmation,
02:52and with the walkie-talkie, we will know who it is.
02:57Okay, it turns out that it is the car that arrives in the house just below.
03:02We can go down.
03:04We will get closer to both the tractopel and the cabin.
03:14So here we are on site, we are on site.
03:17So here we are on site, we are in Manjgari.
03:20We are on a red mud storage site,
03:22and we are doing a sampling,
03:25because we refuse to continue living in the middle of pollution.
03:28So we decided to go and deliver to those who are responsible for this pollution,
03:32so that they can learn to live with it.
03:54Thank you all.
03:55We are going to debrief, but it's perfect.
04:17Stop!
04:18It's about 10 tons of mud that was loaded this weekend,
04:22toxic mud.
04:24There are people who inhale these waste,
04:26there are people who potentially can ingest them.
04:33Where are you going sir?
04:34You are under arrest.
04:35You are under arrest.
04:36There are police officers who intervened,
04:38and who come to arrest the man who was driving this truck.
04:43We don't understand the action of the state on this matter,
04:46or even its compliance in some cases.
04:48So we decided to target the responsible,
04:51and what we just did today, we are going to do it again,
04:53as long as the state does not put an end to this pollution.