Some Rubbish Thoughts...

Some rubbish thoughts…

The vast numbers of visitors making the trip to Zakinthos, 1.2 million a year, caught my mind. It was more a question of how the island coped with such large numbers of people and of interest was how to administer all this lot and how much rubbish might they create in the process of a year.

Greece has an appalling recycling record and only now is the country just beginning to address the issue of refuse and recycling, but more, I suspect, with curious amusement than a desire to genuinely improve the world. It is this same environmentally selfish attitude which is also evident in the island population’s rather uncaring and selfish attitude towards the plight of the caretta caretta or loggerhead turtle.

So, let’s talk rubbish to give you a small insight into the problem. Let us say that on average, every body drinks one litre of bottled water a day – one of the large plastic bottles you buy in the supermarket. Let us then assume that Zakinthos’s 1.2 million visitors stay for one week, over a summer period of 180 days or six months roughly. That works out at 8.4 million tourist bottles of water. Add to that 40,000 local residents and their one litre bottle a day, spread over 180 days and the local population will, in the course of the same six month period, consume 7.2 million bottles. In total, over the entire 6 months, it would be reasonable to presume that Zakinthos alone, one single island, will dump 15.6 million plastic bottles – lets say 16 million bottles, over the summer months, for ease. And, let us not forget, that figure does not include bottles of Coca Cola, Fanta, Sprite, packets of crisps and so on and so on…