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Once upon a time… the Mer de Glace glacier

Text Marta Manzoni

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“Once upon a time there was the Mer de Glace glacier”. The story that I will tell my children one day could begin in this way. “Instead of the service area you saw today, there was a shelter where I slept. Instead of the highway we passed, there was perennial snow”.

In fact we are on the largest glacier in France to collect waste from the last century and it seems to live a premonitory dream: an introspective journey within ourselves awaits us, between meditation and worrying visions. In fact, the first discovery we make is the wheel of a car. Who knows how it ended up on Mer de Glace.

This initiative is called Responsible Mountain, and is organized by Lafuma in collaboration with the French Alpine Club – CAF – which has been dealing with mountain cleaning for over thirty years. A day of concrete action, free and open to everyone, accompanied by UCPA guides, to safeguard the environment. An example of how the French brand promotes social responsibility through awareness-raising projects to consciously experience the mountain. The next appointment is scheduled for September 2020, and there might also be an Italian edition. The organization is impeccable: four hours of scouring and sifting through every cold corner. We put the garbage in our bag and when it is full we empty it in another huge one where all the recovered objects are piled up, then are taken from the helicopter and brought to Chamonix, where we will separate waste.

“Since the first edition, 12 years ago, more than 28 tons of waste have been collected by thousands of participants” – emphasizes Renoud Menozzi, Lafuma brand manager. Due to the melting of the glacier because of climate change, more and more waste that was previously buried by the snow emerged. We found everything: Italian liras, hundreds of cans, thousands of cigarette butts, 12 mussels, rusty iron pipes, a ski. But the plastic dominates the landscape: so much that soon form a small mountain. The same scene occurs every day in our apartments: the plastic bin is always the first to fill up. We go on with our concentrated ‘treasure hunt’, in Zen silence. We are immersed in a lunar scenario. La Vallée Blanche is beautiful and breathtaking. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Mer de Glace was visible from Chamonix. Today to look at it you have to go up to Montenvers. Maybe my children will never see it.

Yet there is still some hope. During the last few months there have been positive signs, both in Italy and in Europe: the new Government has introduced sustainability on the political agenda and discussions have been made about the proposals for measures that foresee new taxes on plastic and the reduction of harmful subsidies for the environment, while Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said: “We will adopt courageous measures against climate change”. The fight against plastics pollution has become the largest environmental movement in recent years. The next step is the transformation of an intention into actions that will have real effects. Individual choices, such as cycling, lowering heating in the home, intelligent shopping, are very relevant on a local scale but involve some sacrifices that few are willing to make when it comes to influence their lifestyle. Tangible behaviors, such as cleaning the beaches or the mountains, allow, literally touching with your own hands what can hurt nature, and make you learn to love it more. “Children, once in place of the toll booth there were large ice caves. But these are things that unfortunately you will never see”.

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