Earth day in a Rubbish Sanctuary

Saturday Apr 22, 2006

When we moved here we were told the place in this photo was a bird sanctuary. Today it remind me of the rubbish strewn river that moved Iron Eyes Cody to tears in the old Keep America Beautiful ads. I thought about organizing a clean-up, but it would require dozens of expensive skips (dumpsters) and the type of earth-moving equipment which is in high demand by the hyperactive construction industry. I've seen cleaner landfills. At least the concrete swan doesn't have bird flu.

There are about 5 acres of parks and other green space within a 10 minute walk of our home. Unfortunately, most of it acquires a new layer of broken glass and other rubbish every weekend. This dumping has probably has more to do with lazyness than the 7.50 Euro bin charges. Friends told me that such "trashing the landlord's property" is a leftover from colonialism. If so, it's really out of place now that Ireland is independent and has the highest home ownership rate in the world. Landscape pollution does vary by country. Cairo, Tokyo and Hong Kong had less trash even though they have 8-10 times the population. Ever since the "Keep America Beautiful" ads, U.S. landscape pollution is usually in the form of advertising billboards and graffiti. Some of Antalya's 1970s architecture wasn't beautiful, but I didn't see any graffiti there. There is an unintentially humorous bit of graffiti near our home, apparently from a street gang called THE WORRIERS. Oh dear, Oh my! Maybe the culprit meant to spell "the Warriers?" ...or even "The Warriors" (Thanks for the correction Johann, this is why I don't write my blog in spray paint!)

The best "earth day" news I can come up with is that we were able to organize a second recycling bin to compensate for the fact that green bin collection is only once a month. I also heard that Sun Ireland is powered (at least in part) by offshore wind energy.

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Posted at 09:40PM Apr 22, 2006 by bnitz in Environment
Tags: eco