Two Marseillais walk on Paris to pick up disposable masks

First wake-up call on the road between Marseille and Paris for the Englishman who walks against the waste linked to Covid-19 -

• Left Thursday on foot from Saint-Charles station in Marseille, Edmund Platt and Frédéric Munsch plan to reach Gare de Lyon in Paris in seven weeks.

• For their first day, they have already collected over 150 disposable masks.

• On the program of this long journey, citizens' gatherings, meetings in schools and, they hope, bivouacs with locals in the style of “I will go to sleep at your place”.

We pick it up when you wake up, after a first night spent under the stars near the Marseille-Paris TGV line, leaving the large tunnel before arriving in Aix-en-Provence.

The wind does not help to fold the tent but Edmund Platt, aka "the English snail", is smiling.

And time: with his sidekick, the photographer Frédéric Munsch, aka “the Marseillais boar”, they embarked on a long journey on foot along the railroad track.

To slow down, but above all to mobilize against the savage pollution of waste, in particular that linked to Covid-19.

After their departure Thursday from Saint-Charles station alone, they picked up 150 disposable masks around the Grand Littoral shopping center.

Or rather "150 mask fuckings" to use the exact term of Edmund Platt, who puts as much earthiness in his vocabulary as in his fights for a greener world.

This Englishman is not at his first coup.

In Marseille, where he has lived since 2011, he launched the # 1dechetparjour project to engage every citizen to collect at least one waste during the day.

Big success on social networks, which joins a wider movement: "Nearly 30,000 photos are posted per day around the world under this hashtag and its counterpart # 1PieceOfRubbish", he welcomes.

Great start for the English snails & the Marseillais wild boar to walk against waste!

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From #marseille to #paris, that is, kilometers and kilometers of steps to raise awareness of all # ConCules on the issue of litter.

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There will be equal pic.twitter.com/JvE4bl6Rej

- 1PieceOfRubbish (@ 1PieceOfRubbish) October 1, 2020

"The guy, he opened the window and threw off his mask"

On his black T-shirt, the message is crystal clear: "Stop screwing your sea".

"The UN says that 75% of disposable masks risk ending up in landfills or in the seas, it is not cotton but plastic, it is not recyclable, warns Edmund Platt.

I encourage everyone to buy cotton masks.

Make a gesture for the planet and stop with the disposable!

"

“Guys, take care of yourself, that's not cool,” he says too.

His good humor leaves him when he talks about a scene he had experienced the day before on a roundabout: "The guy, he opened the window of his car and threw off his mask, calmly bilou, before going home".

For him, "McDonald's, Butts, Masks" is the same fight: "It is often the same who are too lazy to find a trash can."

But Edmund Platt has happy ecology.

Moreover, "he hates the word green".

"I am just like everyone else, a citizen".

In a past commercial life, he took planes, made many round trips by train between Marseille and Paris.

“It's going too fast, this line is too beautiful.

Instead of doing it at 330 km / hour, I wanted to do it at 3 km / hour, to slow down, to bivouac, to meet people ”.

In his satchel, he took the Marmite, the famous English dough, which he hopes to taste in passing.

Like an Antoine de Maximy, he hopes to “go and sleep with you”.

The idea is also, twice a week, to go to a school to talk about ecology, and to organize citizen collections.

"If all goes well, we will arrive at the Gare de Lyon in 7 weeks".

That is to say around November 19, when the book "

should also appear

which relates in particular a previous journey of 8000 km through France, by hitchhiking this time.

To those who would see it as a publicity stunt, Edmund Platt retorts: “This march, this book, they are communication weapons against the pollution of the planet.

“For the time being, his energy is all in his crampons and in the meetings to come: the objective of the first week is to complete the first 120 kilometers, over the 815 km that separate Marseille and Paris.

"Follow us on the networks, send us love", they say in chorus, starting this new day of walking in the wind.

Marseilles

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Planet

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• Coronavirus

• Planet

• Paris

• Environment

• Covid 19

• Marseilles

• Waste