Gulf of Corinth, Island of Trizonia, Greece---I stood there in disbelief. How could a place so beautiful be treated this way? How could they be so short sighted? The smell alone was nauseating, but I felt ill for other far reaching reasons. On a lonely trail Shirish and I had hiked that afternoon, high on a hill top on the far west side of Trizonia, stood a dump. Its contents filled in the side of the hill’s valley and scattered down its’ cliffs. Hidden from the Mainland road’s view, AND from the main shipping and boating lanes in the Mediterranean Sea.
Dozens of plastic crates, thousands of black plastic bags filled with trash. Bottles: both glass and plastic, and many unwanted items from refrigerators to shelving, from perfect w
ood to good terracotta bricks. We stood and glared. Why wasn’t it hauled off the island and disposed of properly? Why weren’t they recycling in any way when only 1 mile across the water, the Mainland had large re-cycle bins at the ferry stop? We continued down the path noting how far the trash had blown along our way. The thought that the entire dump would, due to gravity, end up in the Mediterranean Sea someday made us very quiet. And angry.
Later we asked someone. There was no answer. It was how it is and it’s been going on for a very long time. “They don’t think in those terms,” was the only explanation we were given when asked why the community doesn’t actively work with waste. “They turn and look away.”
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