Beneath the natural wonder of Santorini’s cliff tops and lagoon, the villages are being covered in plastic bottles and waste as the Greek government fails to implement a central recycling scheme. Elise Dalley and Ben O’Halloran report from Santorini, Greece.

Discarded bottle on Perissa Beach, Santorini. Image: Elise Dalley

Public ignorance towards recycling and the need to drink bottled water for health reasons is placing an already distressed Greek economy at serious risk.

Santorini, famous for its spectacular caldera and cliff top villages, is fast becoming overrun with waste from tourism due to an inadequate waste management scheme for plastics and a community that is yet to recognise the importance of recycling.

Dimitris Sigalas, Environmental Advisor to the Mayor of Santorini, told Reportage that while the iconic Island strongly depends upon tourism as a key source of income, visitors are also contributing to serious environmental degradation of the island.

“Without tourism, it is very difficult to survive, but with tourism, we have double problems,” he said.

Sigalas said over 90,000 people visited the island in June during the peak holiday season, more than six times the number of permanent residents.

As Santorini does not have a fresh water source and is yet to offer clean tap water, restaurants, hotels, kiosks and local supermarkets sell hundreds of thousands of bottled water year round, especially during summer as temperatures peak above 40 degrees.

With large volumes of plastic waste and no recycling program in place, Sigalas believes the government must show urgency in a serious attempt to introduce and advocate plastic recycling across Greece.

“The problem belongs exactly, again, to the Greek government.

“It is a big problem for Santorini … because at the moment there is not a central system to recycle all the rubbish in Greece,” Sigalas said.

Most of Santorini is protected for its archaeological importance due to its caldera, or basin which was formed from an volcanic explosion.

This protection is causing great concern for the local council who are fast running out of adequate underground disposal sites for rubbish.

“We are in a very bad situation because of our bad economy, but if the question is about recycling, by the law, we have to start now.

“We cannot go back,” Sigalas said.

Thousands of plastic water bottles are sold as the island has no fresh water source. Image: Elise Dalley

In an attempt to convert Europe into a recycling society who seeks to avoid waste, the European Commission, operating under the European Union, introduced the Thematic Strategy on Waste Prevention and Recycling in 2005.

Key elements of this strategy, including a recognition of the immediate need to recycle in order to cut down on a generation of waste, have been largely ignored by the Greek government.

Sigalas said the government needs to coordinate a strict policy review to allow strategies to filter down into local government levels and bring Greece in line with the rest of Europe.

He told Reportage that while the council on the Island is ready to act, they are looking to Athens for an official policy decision as to when and where a plastic recycling plant can be built.

“Although we are ready, with the papers and the plans, we have not the area.

“Maybe by the end of this year we will have an answer from the government and they will tell us where is the right area to start,” he said.

It is this ignorance and neglect for environmental protection that highlights the old habits of the Greek people that Sigalas said must change.

“It is difficult to change their behaviour, their way of thinking.

“We can earn from tourism and I don’t mean only money, but a way of thinking, a way of life,” he said.

He believes that if the local people can manage to change their way of thinking, then the tourists will follow on.

“It is very important to us…we have to look after ourselves here. If we solve this problem exactly for the 13 000 local people, after will be easier to work in the summer.”

Effie Kotula, a summer tour guide for Kamari Tours on Santorini, agrees that a culture change is needed to better deal with waste on the Island.

“In Greece, we have another culture and mentality [to the rest of Europe], so leaving bottles on the beach is not pollution.

“We have many tourists in summer and we consume many products, so of course it would be better to recycle,” she said.

Dimitris Sigalas believes tourists will help keep the island clean if the residents do the same. Image: Elise Dalley

Vassilis Lignos, hotel and restaurant owner at the famous black pebbled Perissa Beach, believes that residents have already started to change their way of thinking about recycling and respecting the value of their local environment.

However, he also agrees with Sigalas that it is the government who must now demonstrate their willingness to change before any progress will be made.

“People are interested to do this.

“The Greek people are starting to press, but the Mayors’ offices are too slow,” he said.

Born on the Island and now raising his own two children there, Lignos fears the playground of his early days will be soon be ruined by waste because poor government structure is preventing the force of local pressure from being felt by decision makers in Athens.

“We go to the village mayor, who goes to the Santorini mayor, to the Cyclades mayor, to the government; there are too many steps.”

In order to bring about a policy change within the government and a cultural change within the community, both Sigalas and the younger generation in Greece believe education of locals and tourists is the key.

“We have to teach the new generation not to make the same mistakes like my generation.

“If the tourists, when they come here, know the problem and know exactly how it works here, they will look after the island more,” Sigalas said.

Maria Sazlara, 15 year old Greek school student, said while she may recognise the lack of plastic recycling as a problem, most Greeks do not because of a lack of public advertising about its benefits.

“I believe that the Greeks haven’t actually realised what is happening to the planet.

“They find it difficult to get used to the idea of recycling and think there is no point,” she said.

Maria Gkougkoulia, university student from Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, said that she too understands the issues but finds it hard to recycle due to the lack of infrastructure provided by the government.

“There are not many recycling bins.

“Of course I don’t like to throw out rubbish, I have ecological sensibility, but this issue is really big and our system has a different way of progressing to other places,” she said.

Anthi Karahrisafi, also a student in Thessaloniki, agrees that recycling must be addressed as a priority political issue in order to start educating the community.

“They [the people] are not informed, the politicians are not actually interested and they don’t spend their money to advertise recycling,” she said.

Not alone in their beliefs, the European Commission also outlines education as a key strategy to improving waste management and recycling across Europe and despite their 2008 Sustainable Future is in our Hands report demanding “words be put into action”, Greece is still considerably behind.

Sigalas, a resident of the Island for 50 years, said this is just the beginning of what will be a long battle to protect the island from losing the postcard perfect image he is fiercely proud of.

“Of course I worry, but I have to change it, I have to fight against this,” he said.