How Paradise Deals With Garbage.

By Mark Cross

I just finished driving along the Northern California coast—from up above Bodega Bay (where Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was filmed) to Carmel-By-The Sea (where Clint Eastwood of RNC fame was mayor).   I must say, those Californians have their &^%$ together.  Or, more accurately, that they have it carefully collected, stored, and out of sight. 

I was amazed at how little litter there was to be found along that stunning coastline.  In Greece (as well as many other Mediterranean destinations I find enchanting), garbage literally decorates far too much of the landscape.  Whether or not the situation in Greece rises to the level of a national disgrace I am not qualified to say, but garbage is certainly the hottest subject of citizen ire on Mykonos.

One story stands out in my mind.  A couple years back, on a stunning, virtually empty southern Mykonos beach directly across the sea from the neighboring island of Naxos, a woman who’d been sunbathing nude walked to the edge of the water carrying a plastic garbage bag.   She proceeded to empty the contents into the sea followed by dropping the bag.  An American couple nearby yelled, “Hey, what are you doing?” 

The woman screamed back, “Don’t you foreigners tell us how to live on our island!  The currents will carry it all to Naxos.”

What can one do with some one like that?  Okay, this is real life not a murder mystery, so what else can one do with such a person?  To set the record straight, I know the woman and, though Greek, she is not Mykonian and lives on the island only during tourist season.  Nor is she is like most Greeks, who would not bath nude or so brazenly pollute their waters.  But she does exemplify a ready willingness on the part of many to litter.

Garbage collection and disposal on Mykonos is a mega-problem, one of seeming concern to virtually every resident of the island except those government officials charged with actually doing something about it.  Officials claim the problem stems from a five-fold and more increase in population during tourist season, but California too has a massive tourist population to contend with…and its crisis fiscal situation is often compared to Greece’s. 

Omiros Evangelinos

Many say the root of Mykonos’ problem is public indifference toward an “I can do as I wish” attitude that has left much of the wildest parts of the island accessorized in wind-blown blue plastic shopping bags and cast aside water bottles.  But there are those who speak out and others willing to do more than just speak.  One is Omiros Evangelinos, co-owner of perhaps the chicest and best-known nightspot on Mykonos, Astra. 

Omiros organized a group to clean up one of the island’s windiest beaches and filmed the process.  Then he submitted his work to an international film festival. Here’s a link to the video, titled MYKONOS BLUES.  It’s subtitled in English, except for a forty-five second piece beginning at the 7:00 minute mark where some American writer is interviewed and the subtitles are in Greek.

Mykonos Blues opening shot.

The video was shot during the last campaign for mayor of Mykonos and so appropriate concern for the environment was expressed by electioneering government officials who showed up at the cleanup site for some camera face time.  A particularly interesting example of the political byplay on Mykonos today is the four minute or so give and take with the mayor (starting at the 8:00 minute mark).

To Omiros’ credit the filming did not stop at the cleanup site.  He took his camera to find out what happened to the garbage collected by the volunteers that was “picked up by the city” for disposal.  To me, this was the film’s most poignant, tragic example of a local government mindset that haunts the island as an insidious threat to paradise. 

As Omiros points out (beginning at the 12:35 minute mark), what was supposed to end up in Mykonos’ new sanitary landfill, never made it there.  Instead, the bags were dropped by the side of the road at the old illegal burn site, left to break open and be re-distributed across the island by the winds.  Or burned, and God knows what distributed then.

Maybe the woman at the beach was not as out of line with local mores as she seemed?  After all, there is the old adage, “A fish smells from his head.”   Never more so than in the case of garbage.

Jeff—Saturday