• Tons of waste poured into the waters of the Mediterranean a month ago, off the coast of Marseille.

  • Since then, garbage continues to arrive on the shore, but most of the pollution is said to be invisible.

It was a month ago. Heavy rains fell on Marseille, draining in their wakes to the sea tons of waste on the ground due to the garbage collection strike. A month later, the maritime prefecture of the Mediterranean indicates that it has "carried out reconnaissance missions at sea along the coast of Bouches-du-Rhône by air". And affirms: “Nothing has been reported suggesting a continuity of pollution at the end of the bad weather of last month off Marseille. It appears that significant work has been done on the coast to collect waste. There have been no other sources of pollution at this stage in this sector. "

On the beach of Huveaune, south of Marseille, however, the hour is not satisfied for Eric Akopian.

" Look at her !

There are all the shitty little things left, pieces of plastic, polyesters, butts, sighs the founder of the Clean my Calanques association.

It had to.

He stepped over the packaging of all kinds and plastic cups that litter the ground, to the point of making this beach a veritable dumping ground from which it is difficult to distinguish the sand in some places.

"Can you imagine a child there?"

He sighs.

Beside her, her dog sniffs rotting plastic bags and soda cans.

"The sea rejects all the little things with the tide"

“The sea rejects all the little things, with the tide, even more after the rain like this weekend, says Eric Akopian A few days after the bad weather, we had collected five tons of waste on the beaches.

But the town hall of Marseille had estimated that there were 30,000 tonnes of waste at sea. Suddenly, there were 25,000 left ... "

Above all, according to Eric Akopian, a month after the natural disaster, the resulting pollution remains mostly invisible, not to say insidious, since it comes from microplastics now dissolved in the Mediterranean Sea.

“And these microplastics are then ingested by the fish,” laments Eric Akopian.

"It is therefore often too late to act"

An observation shared by the maritime prefecture itself, just a few days after the bad weather. "When they are dumped at sea, the vast majority of waste of plastic origin does not remain on the surface, because they quickly dilute in the water column and end up settling on the seabed, writes the prefecture. in a press release on October 8. Thus, when major pollution by plastic waste occurs, as was the case on October 4, it is often too late to act: a minority of waste floats on the surface and may end up reaching the coast, but the the great majority remain submerged and constitute invisible pollution. "

A situation that could discourage Eric Akopian, who has struggled for years to preserve the Marseille coastline.

“I try not to think about that, if not at one point, we lower our arms, sweep the Marseillais.

Personally, I even think, somewhere, that this natural disaster has finally made people react.

Since then, there has not been a day without which I have been called upon on social networks.

I do interventions every week in schools, and we manage to educate more and more people.

"

The association invites the Marseillais to put on plastic gloves for another collection organized at the Mucem on November 13, with the Bon Entendeur group on the turntables to combine the useful with the pleasant.

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  • Rain

  • Marseilles

  • Pollution

  • Sea