When about 2 years ago the Athenian municipalities placed special recycling bins all over the city, they also handed out special recycling bags in order to encourage, I thought, the citizens to recycle. In my area, if you happened to miss the door-to-door distribution day, you could actually go to the city hall and, after signing your name, get one of those bags. I always thought it was very considerate of the municipality and the whole having to sign for a bag procedure made it, I thought, even more official and serious.
Last year I moved from the suburbs, where I grew up, to the centre of Athens, i.e. to the largest municipality and, naïve as I am, I went to the city hall to ask for a new bag, since the old one I had left with my mom when I moved out. I could see in the face of the man at the information desk that he thought I was weird; he did play along with the weird one, however, and told me that I had to visit the sanitation department, but because it was far away, he offered to call the department and ask if they had any bags. The lady on the phone most probably also thought that I was weird, however, she did offer to keep my name and number and after consulting with the head of her department, who would check if they had any more bags, call me back. Of course I never got a call and I never got my bag. Am I surprised? Not really, especially after hearing the man on the phone referring to the recycling bag as “the recycling bag we used for advertisement”. So the bag was not handed out in order to encourage recycling, but in order to advertise it, as if it were a new brand of detergent: “Try recycling; it’s good for the environment!”
Is it surprising, then, that many citizens thought that the recycling bag is a fashion statement and an alternative to a hand bag (you can still see them going around town with their blue recycling bag)? I mean even the government treats recycling as a trend that might stick or might pass; as a product that we might want to buy or we might not. Recycling is not something you can advertise! Recycling is and should be a way of life; something you have to encourage people to do, if not enforce (as is the case in other countries). I mean let's face it, recycling is nowadays a necessity. But the municipalities are not campaigning for a better world or a healthier planet; they are advertising. And on a more cynical note, they are not even advertising recycling; they are advertising themselves: “Try us, we are good and trendy – we have an ecological conscience” And of course an ecological conscience they have not and will never have; the ecological conscience is only a façade that they put on for the eyes of the E.U. and for the eyes of the citizens during election periods.
The majority of this country will never grow an ecological conscience because there’s no one to help them grow one; because no one truly cares. And those that do care cannot do anything about it, because the others do not let them. When I first moved to the center and brought my garbage for recycling to the bin near my house, I found it filled with common garbage. And when I went over to the young (!) man working in the bakery just across the bin and told him to keep an eye on the people throwing garbage in the recycling bin, I got the answer common to all that is going bad in this country: “What do you expect me to do? This is Greece you live in!”
Countries do not change from the outside-in, but from the inside-out. A country does not change simply because the façade (in this case the façade being the recycling bin) changes. In order for the country to change, the people must change. And in this country the people will never change because generations upon generations of citizens keep perpetuating the habits and beliefs of those that came before. And no government and no educational system can change that. Despite appearances, this country is doomed to forever remain a third world country and it’s not just the fault of the governments that come and go, but mostly of the people, because, after all, it is the people that make the governments!
Last year I moved from the suburbs, where I grew up, to the centre of Athens, i.e. to the largest municipality and, naïve as I am, I went to the city hall to ask for a new bag, since the old one I had left with my mom when I moved out. I could see in the face of the man at the information desk that he thought I was weird; he did play along with the weird one, however, and told me that I had to visit the sanitation department, but because it was far away, he offered to call the department and ask if they had any bags. The lady on the phone most probably also thought that I was weird, however, she did offer to keep my name and number and after consulting with the head of her department, who would check if they had any more bags, call me back. Of course I never got a call and I never got my bag. Am I surprised? Not really, especially after hearing the man on the phone referring to the recycling bag as “the recycling bag we used for advertisement”. So the bag was not handed out in order to encourage recycling, but in order to advertise it, as if it were a new brand of detergent: “Try recycling; it’s good for the environment!”
Is it surprising, then, that many citizens thought that the recycling bag is a fashion statement and an alternative to a hand bag (you can still see them going around town with their blue recycling bag)? I mean even the government treats recycling as a trend that might stick or might pass; as a product that we might want to buy or we might not. Recycling is not something you can advertise! Recycling is and should be a way of life; something you have to encourage people to do, if not enforce (as is the case in other countries). I mean let's face it, recycling is nowadays a necessity. But the municipalities are not campaigning for a better world or a healthier planet; they are advertising. And on a more cynical note, they are not even advertising recycling; they are advertising themselves: “Try us, we are good and trendy – we have an ecological conscience” And of course an ecological conscience they have not and will never have; the ecological conscience is only a façade that they put on for the eyes of the E.U. and for the eyes of the citizens during election periods.
The majority of this country will never grow an ecological conscience because there’s no one to help them grow one; because no one truly cares. And those that do care cannot do anything about it, because the others do not let them. When I first moved to the center and brought my garbage for recycling to the bin near my house, I found it filled with common garbage. And when I went over to the young (!) man working in the bakery just across the bin and told him to keep an eye on the people throwing garbage in the recycling bin, I got the answer common to all that is going bad in this country: “What do you expect me to do? This is Greece you live in!”
Countries do not change from the outside-in, but from the inside-out. A country does not change simply because the façade (in this case the façade being the recycling bin) changes. In order for the country to change, the people must change. And in this country the people will never change because generations upon generations of citizens keep perpetuating the habits and beliefs of those that came before. And no government and no educational system can change that. Despite appearances, this country is doomed to forever remain a third world country and it’s not just the fault of the governments that come and go, but mostly of the people, because, after all, it is the people that make the governments!
