Wednesday, September 28, 2005

And a fine mayor she is

Just about everyone in Greece knows about the problems Athens has been having with trash for the last few months. The dumpsite for Athenian trash is a landfill located in Ano Liosia, which is temporarily closed (again) because employees are upset by the sewage that gets dumped there. This issue in itself is bad enough, but what has the fine mayor of Athens requested of its citizens?

In an effort to avoid a repeat of scenes witnessed in Athens in June when mounds of garbage piled up on the city’s streets, the capital’s mayor, Dora Bakoyannis, yesterday pleaded with Athenians to hold onto their trash as workers at the Ano Liosia landfill closed the dump indefinitely.

Yep. Please keep your trash. Let it pile up on your balconies instead. What an amazing mayoral think tank she's got going on here.

As this has been an ongoing problem, more solutions should have been worked out in the last few months. Athens is a city of 4 million people, for god's sake.

I am SO glad I don't live in Athens, for ten million reasons more than just this. Sorry you have to suffer, Athenians.

5 comments:

Gia-Gina said...

This sounds horrible!! Where does it all go besides the balconies?

melusina said...

Well, normally there are big trash bins on every corner where you take your trash. When we lived in Athens, these bins filled up by the end of each day, before the garbage men came. I can't imagine how these people are going to keep the trash in their homes or on their balconies, and I can't believe the mayor has asked them to keep their trash. It is such a foul situation.

The SeaWitch said...

When the garbage strike happened back in June, Ms Wackoyanni gave us the same spiel...keep our garbage until they sorted it out. I don't know about anyone else but my 3 member family generates a Hefty bag and more every day. There was no WAY I was keeping that stench and germ factory close to my kitchen. I took the bags down to the bins which were overflowing enough to fill up 3 parking spaces by the end of the first day. It was disgusting. We pay taxes for garbage removal, they should remove it. This whole Ano Liossia debacle should have been cleared up years ago but because ineptitude seems to be the only qualification for securing a job in the public sector, Athenians will suffer not just an inconvenience but their own health as well with so many tons of festering garbage on their streets.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, we have the dumpsters on each street corner. We actually have a turf war happening in my neighborhood about which trash can should be used. The neighbor over the road belive we shouldn't put trash in the dumpster that's on their side of the road. She thinks I should walk to the end of my block and put it in the trash can there. Of course this now inspires me to deliberately put all my trash in that dumpster just to annoy her. It was more funny when she came out to complain my mom for the same thing. Let's just say mom made her feelings clear.

As for Dora, she's not a bad mayor overall. But I agree it's a crazy idea asking people to stink out their houses and balconies by holding onto the trash.

melusina said...

I can appreciate the fact that trash building up on the street is horrible, but really, this is a bad, bad situation for a city the size of Athens to be in. And it the mayor's job to make sure it gets solved.

EllasDevil, I was going to say I can't believe there is a turf war over which garbage bin to use, but then I realized, I do believe it, knowing how people are.