The Englishman Who Wanted to Clean France: L'Escargot Anglais

By Edmund Platt and Natacha Neveu

In 2017, Edmund Platt aka The English Snail embarked on an 8,000 km hitchhike around France to pick up the trash that 1 in 3 French people chuck from their cars every day. Hellbent on making some noise about the disastrous littering problem, the plastic suffocating our oceans and our broken consumer society, Eddie's message is honest, ultra-powerful, and full of home truths.

Highly anticipated by the media and fans alike, his first book details the nitty-gritty life on the road in the land of frog’s legs and garlic breath. With nothing but a backpack, litter-picker and healthy thirst for beer, his three-month journey will change the way you look at life and maybe even your priorities. Time isn't money, it's much more ****ing valuable than that!

This book is a human rollercoaster adventure laced with twists and turns that anyone can relate to. Rich in spontaneity, amusing and eye-opening, The Englishman Who Wanted to Clean France is the ultimate slap in the face and kick-start we could all use during these contagious times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Nov 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781800468245

Book preview

Introduction: Why ‘The English Snail’ (L’Escargot Anglais)?

Hi, I’m Eddie Platt, from Leeds in England. I’m the president and co-founder of an association called 1 Piece of Rubbish and ex-European sales manager who’s been living in Marseille teaching English since 2011. This book ‘L’Escargot Anglais: The Englishman Who Wanted to Clean France’ is the three-month diary of my 8,000 kilometres hitchhike, meeting the locals, sleeping in my hammock, drinking gallons of beer, and picking up almost two million pieces of trash during the summer of 2017. Inspired by this life-changing experience, I’d like to share some of the cleanest and dirtiest moments with you, as well as my learnings and discoveries about man-made, petroleum plastic pollution, and our cancerous consumer society which is suffocating our planet and getting right on my tits.

‘L’Escargot Anglais: The Englishman Who Wanted to Clean France’ is for you; whether you love France, its cheeses, fresh baguettes, wine, brandy, and climate or whether you can’t stand France and its frogs’ legs, undercooked raw steaks, idiotic opening hours and non-existent customer service, or the French in general with their, ‘we are ‘ze best and we drive on ‘ze right’ attitude.

It’s my first book and I hope you find it entertaining, enriching and thought-provoking. Maybe you’ll identify with it in parts and occasionally laugh out loud in others. According to my mum, I never wrote this much throughout my entire education. I’m quite proud of myself and think it’s totally mint that you’re about to read my story. Before going any further though, here’s a YouTube teaser of the trip in French with English subtitles.

This book is for everyone who still flicks their cigarette butts on the floor (as I did 10,000 times as a smoker), or not. It’s for you whether you’ve started reducing the amount of single-use plastic in your life, or not. It’s for people who chuck trash from their cars, or who leave their picnic leftovers on a bench 10 metres from a bin, or on the beach - thinking someone is paid to clean up after them, or not. This book is for you if you think that Dubai is a must-visit holiday destination and that posting a photo on Instagram with a Starbucks in your hand is good for your image. It’s for you if you’ve got your own reusable water bottle and care about the environment and all the little interlinked ecosystems that surround us, or not. It’s for you whether you earn six quid an hour, 160K a year, or nothing at all. This 90-day ‘don’t fuck my planet’ ² adventure is for you, whoever you are and wherever you may be. Enjoy, and if the intro bores you, feel free to go straight to the first chapter where the real action begins immediately with my first driver, Julien.

The original catalyst for ‘L’Escargot Anglais’ took place on the 14th of August 2015 in one of my favourite places on the whole planet, Roundhay Park - my youth time haunt, in my hometown of Leeds. I was walking around Waterloo Lake at 7:30 in the morning when I picked up a can of Diet Coke. As I approached a bin with the can in hand, I decided to post a selfie on Instagram with the caption: ‘My new habit is to pick up at least 1 piece of rubbish every day for the rest of my life’ - adorned with the hashtag #1PieceOfRubbish. This single photo was a huge success and received many mixed comments of support, encouragement, and bewilderment;

–‘Come to Manchester, it’s horribly dirty too.’

–‘My husband does the same, good for you.’

–‘How embarrassing, why would you pick up someone else’s trash?’

–‘Great job, if only more people did the same!’

–‘Who are these bellends who toss litter on the floor?’

And the most famous of all was from Georges-Edouard Legré in Marseille;

–‘If you can motivate all the Marseillais* to do it, you’re my god.’

Alright then! I immediately decided to rise to the challenge because after all, who wouldn’t want to be someone’s god, even just for one day?! After my summer break in Yorkshire, I returned to Marseille and met up with Georges-Edouard to discuss cleaning France’s oldest and dirtiest city and me becoming his god. I never expected this photo and statement to go global, starting an online litter picking frenzy around the world.

Ever since that day back in August 2015, hundreds of people have been proudly posting photos of themselves picking up trash on social media. Tons of photos were flooding the internet of people picking up trash in the street, parks, beaches, cycle paths, play areas, woodlands, and anywhere there’s trash (basically everywhere). All these photos were uploaded with the hashtags #1PieceOfRubbish and #1DechetParJour. We’d created a bangin’ eco-movement for cleaner streets, cleaner cities and a cleaner future. And I was fast becoming a litter picking god (ha ha ha) for an active, global community striving for positive change.

I was pumped up like a raging bull and encouraged by all the online love. Georges-Edouard and I agreed to cause a ruckus and take the action of picking up litter to the masses, raise the plastic pollution alarm, and make it impossible to ignore. We set out to reinvent ecological communication and bring much-needed visibility and coolness to something that lots of people were already doing, most often anonymously. We hoped to wake up the world and provide real insight into how matters are being made worse through our ignorance. We also hoped and wanted to empower people to mark their territory with vital and urgent transitional solutions. Part of our strategy was to uplift and encourage everyone to take control of their future and lead reduced plastic lifestyles. And of course, I wanted to be on the cover of Time magazine and the Yorkshire Evening Post like The Pied bloody Piper.

Within one month, we’d officially called our movement ‘1 Piece of Rubbish - 1 Déchet par Jour’. Georges-Edouard had become community manager, my coworking colleague Romain Jouannaud had become our graphic designer and webmaster and I remained frontman with my telephone permanently in hand. We built a Facebook page, Instagram, and Twitter account to communicate with hundreds of international followers and to primarily accommodate their photos and videos with our hashtags #1PieceOfRubbish and #1DechetParJour (over 27,000 posts and counting). Such rapid and organic growth for an ecological initiative was a social media first and a complete surprise to us all. The three of us were bracing ourselves with no idea where we were heading. Our bearded trio had to remain cool, calm, and collected as all eyes were on us.

I remember how excited I was in September 2015, sitting naked on the terrace of a villa in the Corsican village of Piana, designing the bin logo via Skype with Romain (fully dressed) in his office in Marseille. With a big smile on my face, I was thinking, ‘We’re doing something amazing, we’re taking litter picking and plastic pollution awareness to a global audience. Honestly, what living, breathing human being isn’t capable of picking up at least 1 Piece of Rubbish every day. We’re making litter picking and eco-awareness cool, stylish, rock’n’roll, and even sexy. If we stay organic, natural, and remain ourselves - simply go with the flow - this unplanned, spontaneous eco-punk adventure will take care of itself...’

What followed was a roller coaster ride of media frenzy that inspired 1,000s of street and beach cleanups, countless school visits, and production of the educational videos ‘SHOCK EDUCATION ACTION’ for our YouTube channel ³. I’ve appeared on French TV too many times to count, starred in an award-winning documentary Le Grand Saphir ⁴ with my mate Manu ‘Mustard Balls’, had political confrontations and frustrations, and even collaborated with fellow associations and celebrity ambassadors. Not bad for a lad with no ‘A’ levels.

On the 5th of December 2015, we had a breakfast press conference to launch the website www.1pieceofrubbish.com / www.1dechetparjour.com. My friend Jess from Pernod Ricard provided two bottles of Chivas whisky and I made sure that the 15 journalists had at least one good Irish Coffee with their croissants and chocolatines*. The whisky at breakfast was certainly very original and if you YouTube ‘Marseille 1 déchet par jour’ ⁵, you’ll see the well-lubricated outcome for yourselves. Not only did we get lots of local coverage, but we also headlined in national medias LCI, Le Figaro, and Le Parisien. The journalists did a bloody brilliant job of diffusing our message. So much so that the following morning at 8 am, whilst sitting on the throne, Georges-Edouard rang me,

- Where are you? We’re in front of your door with M6 and they want you in the national lunchtime news!

Fucking buzzing, I was! I shot downstairs without pulling the chain.

Four months later in April 2016, one particular headline referenced me as ‘l’Anglais qui voulait nettoyer Marseille’ which translates as, ‘The Englishman who wanted to clean Marseille’. That one headline got used countless times around the world by AFP (Agence France Presse) and a Marseillaise who’d recently moved from Marseille to Martinique joked that she’d gone because she saw my face too much in the press. When she saw me in the Martinique Times she thought I was stalking her!

The viral effect was relentless and dozens of messages were coming in with the same invitation over and over;

- ‘Eddie, when are you coming to clean…

–‘Lille…

–‘Nantes…

–‘Strasbourg…

–‘Paris…

–‘Biarritz…

–‘Chamonix…

–‘Annecy…

–‘Montpellier…

–‘La Rochelle…

–‘La Réunion…

–‘La Ciotat…

–‘Guadeloupe…

–‘Martinique…

–‘... because there’s mountains of litter and dirty tossers here too. People just don’t respect where they live anymore… Our seas and oceans are suffocating with our man-made throw-away plastic… Whole ecosystems are dying around the world and we’re next! What the hell is wrong with people?!’

Obviously I had to respond, an original and crazy plan to get amongst this trash tossing population had to be concocted. Something wild and adventurous that had never been done before on French soil, something so...so British. Why not hitchhike?!

I’ve been fascinated by this mode of transport ever since hearing my dad’s adventures from 1958. He was 18 when he did Paris to La Grande Motte for a crush (who would become his second wife). His incredible Gatsby-esque, black and white adventures that I relished again and again on our road trips together had a lasting impression on me (when you’re 7 and your dad is talking about the 1950s, everything is in black and white).

Once he’d gotten a motorbike ride with a guy from Lyon to Avignon and after 220 kilometres the Triumph owner generously paid for a room. In the middle of the night the pilot also ‘generously’ made a move on my dad who punched him out cold. He said he regretted not taking the keys and easy riding it south to the Mediterranean. Personally I wouldn’t hesitate to speed off with someone’s bike or car should they try getting into my trousers. Fuck the consequences of a high-speed Californian-style highway patrol chase.

My mum and dad once rode in a Bentley from London to Leeds while hitchhiking, she said it was like sitting on a Chesterfield sofa watching the home counties go by, gin and tonic in hand. Thanks to my dad’s storytelling I love the freedom, spontaneity, and risk of it. Not to mention the huge variety of kind, generous, fun, and amazing people from a multitude of nationalities and walks of life you meet on the side of the road. Hitchhiking for me is simply a fan’fucking’tastic form of endless human adventure.

So, on the 29th of June 2017 with the support of the 1POR association, I set off on a stir-crazy 8,000 kilometres, 90-day litter picking trip to meet as many amazing, trash heroes as possible. Calling the adventure, and myself, ‘L’Escargot Anglais’ - The English Snail.

The planned route for L’Escargot Anglais was three times around the land of smelly cheese and garlic breath. Starting on the outside of France and sliming my way inwards like a snail’s shell. I was going to be picked up 150 times, wait anywhere between four hours and four seconds for a lift, sleep in 49 different places in my hammock or the comfort of people’s homes, and pick up between 75,000 and two million pieces of rubbish. Guesstimately two million, because when you pick up a single piece of polystyrene the size of a Rubik’s Cube you actually have 100,000 tiny pieces of polystyrene in your hand. There are between 80-100 pieces of fluffy plastic in 1cm³ of this hugely polluting petrol product. I won’t bore you with the scientific details because you can find the info online if you’re interested. You can pull apart the next piece of polystyrene you pick up in the street too. The fabrication of polystyrene alone is mega harmful to the planet, but once used and thrown in the garbage it’s doubly toxic for the planet.

Anyways, the aim of my 8,000 km trip around l’Hexagone (because le France is five-sided) was to communicate about the dangerous consequences of plastic pollution and to meet people who pick up litter in their local communities daily; the people who want to make a direct and immediate difference to the health of the planet and their local ecosystems. The people and associations who’ve been litter picking for longer than I’ve been alive were my new inspiration and heroes.

With the help of two work-experience diamonds Vanessa Moreaux and Natacha Grimaldi, we made a list of potential associations, groups, structures, and individuals who might be interested in my trip and possibly hosting me. The idea was to put these heroes in the spotlight and share their stories with the 1POR community. There are lots of people picking up trash in France, simply because there are lots of people throwing trash chez Thierry Henry. Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly love France but it seems to be treated like a giant dustbin ashtray. It could even hold the European trash record with 500 kilos of rubbish per kilometre on the motorways and A-roads alone. Apparently one in three Frenchies ⁶ throw trash from their cars, through unconscious habit, disrespect, or unlove for their country. I don’t know the figures for England, are they the same, better or worse? England can’t be as filthy, can it? I’m genuinely asking because I haven’t lived in the UK since 2010.

Personally I felt the need to act, having thrown 10,000 cigarettes on the floor and out of my BMW 3 series or Citroën 2CV and travelled by plane twice a week as a salesman. When I was young, I’d throw sweet wrappers out the window to watch them hopefully touch the car behind, not for one second thinking about the inevitable global plastic pollution we’re now inhaling. Mind you, I never threw bottles, cans, or big food packaging of any type. Yet the fact of the matter is, like all of us, I’ve polluted my planet and now I’m making a conscious effort to make amends without being a condescending, lesson giving, vegan tree-hugging, gluten-free drinking pain in the ass.

Seriously though, who are the numpties who still throw out of their cars nowadays, and who leave their picnics behind, and drop cans, and fast food leftovers in the street? Who are these tossers in our societies that continuously contribute to the plastification of our waterways, seas, and oceans? It’s you and me, my friends. It’s all of us together. We’re the bloody virus! As anyone who can tie their own shoelace is aware, we’re in a state of emergency regarding plastic pollution. Everyone must have seen the heart-breaking Blue Planet series and images of the floating plastic islands at sea, thousands of dead birds, whales, cod, and tuna with their stomachs full of plastic and dolphins caught in fishing nets, or turtles with straws up their noses. There is trash abso’fucking’lutely everywhere. It’s a blanket covering the entire planet and if people choose not to change their consumer habits and start doing something about it, then I seriously wonder if the neurons of their (or your) brain aren’t fother mucking functioning!

How did we end up in this mess? Firstly, we’ve all been brainwashed by the marketing folk and advertising executives of Madison Avenue, like in the popular series ‘Mad Men’. We have become accustomed to buying and using products that in reality, we don’t need. As consumers, we must stop using pointless single-use plastic and avoid buying individually wrapped items when more responsible options are available. We must refuse, reuse, recycle, repair, and regrow where physically possible. There’s no debate here, the results are in. We must all shun these petroleum-based products and eliminate them from our households, offices, and routines if we want to be proud of the world we leave behind. The hard-wearing, reusable plastic we already have in our lives are clearly not single-use, they are robust and useful. Keep using them, then repair them if possible before recycling or upcycling. Disposable short-term, or single-use, items like plastic bags, bottles, cotton buds, cups, cutlery, even the famous but aimless Hand Spinner, all form part of the annual €1.5 trillion ⁷ polyethylene plastic industry funded by ExxonMobil Chemical and friends.

This book is my combat against the lobbies, capitalists, industrialists, and politicians who crave growth and profit in the sacrifice of human wellbeing and natural harmony. This book is my fight against the 1 % richest greediest MOFOs alive, on behalf of the 99 % of us. For 100 % of the natural world us humans are part of. It’s time the over-privileged 1 % paid the price, not Mother Nature, and certainly not us!

The plastic pollution problem persists thanks to mafiosa waste collection companies in France and around the world all bending the rules and regulations. Only around 16 % of trash is properly recycled in France and the remaining 84 % of waste is either sent straight to landfill, incinerated to generate polluting energy, or packed badly on to container ships to be recycled in Asia, allegedly. Meanwhile, the likes of Veolia, Derichebourg, Pizzorno are making millions, even billions in the process. They seriously need to act fast for the planet instead of for their fat fucking pockets. The reality is that they’ll keep taking us for complete idiots if we don’t demand rapid change and start voting with our wallets.

Now I know blaming is hardly constructive but we can’t deny that certain members of our societies do not respect the environment. The people who throw their McDonald’s and KFC out of the car, leave their cans or coffee cups on a bench, their beer cans, and empty bottles wherever they’ve been drinking, or the leftovers of their picnic on the beach - you know who you are. It could be your neighbour, colleague, cousin, boyfriend or girlfriend, mum, dad, children, or even you, who is willingly making matters worse because you’re just a lazy twip with a twatty attitude. We’ve all seen someone throw trash out of their car and have been frustratingly powerless to do anything about it. Our mere existence pollutes. Even if you’re the best eco-warrior on the planet, cooking home-grown veg on a wood fire, you’re still producing CO2. We’ve all dropped or lost something in the street, or had a napkin or plastic cup blow off a table and not run after it. We all shit in clean drinking water, buy too many clothes and eat avocados that need 320-400 litres of water each to be grown ⁸. Thus, starving villages of drinking water and making Coca-Cola cheaper than water for already impoverished residents. Not to mention the air miles necessary for avocados to get to the shops and on to your healthy ‘planet-loving’ plate. I don’t buy avocados anymore but if there’s a party with homemade guacamole on the table I’ll allow myself a dip, for old time’s sake you know, but I don’t miss it.

Finally, this whole environmental experience has changed my life for better and for worse. For better because every week I see people around the world stepping in the right direction toward living more sustainably and their ecological transitions make me immensely happy. I sleep very well at night knowing that my personal life path choice is in harmony with the planet and her needs. Never do I seek perfection, which doesn’t exist, but since 2015 I’ve reduced my consumption of plastic by around 85 %. I’m still a sucker for crisps, peanuts, and chocolate which are almost always wrapped in plastic, but I do eat 90 % less meat and refuse air travel completely, preferring to either hitch or take the train (when my mum pops her clogs I’ll, of course, hire a jet to get home). More often than not I eat locally and in season, and use vinegar, soap, lemon peel, and bicarbonate of soda to clean my house and clothes. Even if zero-waste perfection doesn’t exist, I am trying really hard, step by step, and day by day, to take less and give more in coherence with my new values. I probably still drink too much wine and beer, but that’s just ‘coz there’s always something to celebrate or someone to appreciate a drink with.

Given that everything has its opposite, my transitional experience has also had its negative moments. When you become eco-conscious and so heavily engaged in a fight for humanity and the planet, your friends and family don’t necessarily understand your shift. They think it’s strange because all of a sudden you’re out of character and spending so much time giving a shit about the planet. When before you cared about little else than yourself, good times, and pleasing people around you. So when you get the ‘my-consumer-lifestyle-has-zero-positive-effect-on-the-planet-and-I-must-do-something-about-it’ bug most people think you’re a freak. They don’t realise that you are adapting gradually with everyday lifestyle changes to be more coherent, and respectful of the planet and your surroundings, bit by bit. They don’t realise that you’re re-educating yourself and learning and supporting local sustainable circular economies with a newfound passion and that you’re also abandoning plane travel (unless it’s for a funeral). Nor do they realise that you’re now aware of something called cognitive dissonance and that you’re trying your best not to have any. It is a road less travelled which can mean unintentionally losing touch with some of your nearest and dearest. This is my personal experience, which I’m conscious of and working on. I remember saying to my mum in 2018 that I was eliminating meat from my life, you should have seen the look on her face. It was as if I was 16 years old and ‘coming out’ on her birthday.

As Gandhi said a long time ago,

Be the change you want to see in the world.

It’s now 2020 and this still applies. The time has come to see things clearly, let’s take responsibility for our planet together.

Check out the official 11-minute video ⁹ of my trip put together by the talented Bérengère Richards and Hélène Segura. In the clip I asked some people the following questions:

–Why do you protect your natural habitat?

–What would you like to see more/less of?

–Do you have a message for people who throw trash out of their cars and leave their shite everywhere?

Enjoy the hitch fother muckers!

Notes:

1.YouTube: L’Escargot Anglais - The English Snail 2017 (French & English Subtitles) Edmund MrBin Platt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKN9msv1Qy8&t=4s

2.Instagram: Hugues Pieto @dontfuckmyplanet

https://www.instagram.com/dontfuckmyplanet/?hl=fr

3.YouTube: 1 Déchet Par Jour / 1 Piece of Rubbish - S.E.A. SHOCK EDUCATION ACTION #1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-jY2j6bpME

4.Le Grand Saphir - Une Révolte Ordinaire (Documentary in French)

https://legrandsaphir-lefilm.com/

Imago TV: Le Grand Saphir (Documentary in French)

https://www.imagotv.fr/documentaires/le-grand-saphir

5.YouTube: France 3 Toutes Régions: 1 Piece of Rubbish: a brilliant and simple idea born in Marseille

(YouTube : France 3 Toutes Régions : 1 déchet par jour : une idée simple et très sympa née à Marseille)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfMASAuER_g&t=5s

YouTube: Marseille 1 Piece of Rubbish per Day

(YouTube : Marseille 1 Déchet Par Jour)

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Marseille+1+d%C3%A9chet+par+jour

6.Le Parisien: More than one in three French people throw their waste out of their car window

(Le Parisien : Plus d’un Français sur trois jette ses déchets par la fenêtre de sa voiture) https://www.leparisien.fr/societe/plus-d-un-francais-sur-trois-jettent-ses-dechets-par-la-fenetre-de-sa-voiture-31-07-2019-8126937.php

7.Usine Nouvelle: European plastics industry will differentiate itself through quality, according to PlasticsEurope

(Usine Nouvelle : L’industrie européenne du plastique se différenciera par la qualité, selon PlasticsEurope) https://www.usinenouvelle.com/article/l-industrie-europeenne-du-plastique-se-differenciera-par-la-qualite-selon-plasticseurope.N393227

8.Danwatch: How much water does it take to grow an avocado?

https://old.danwatch.dk/en/undersogelseskapitel/how-much-water-does-it-take-to-grow-an-avocado/

The Guardian: How much water goes into producing our food and drink - in pictures

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/gallery/how-much-water-to-make-food-drink

9.YouTube: L’Escargot Anglais - The English Snail - 1 Piece