French activists are protesting against toxic red mud

Brut America

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.

Transcript

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.

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