Living in Crete: Plastic fantastic

I'm going to spread the good word!

If you haven't already heard of The Plastiki Expedition, shame on you, and go have a look now (http://www.theplastiki.com). The brain child of one the Rothschild clan, one of these guys you want to hate, but annoyingly he's doing good things with his privileged position, so fair play.

A brief run-down for those who can't be arsed clicking on the link: said Rothschild clan member headed up a team which designed a boat made from 12500 plastic bottles. These made up most of the boat but the superstructure was made of newly designed, completely biodegradable next generation fibreglass. The other main structures were made from recycled aluminium and additional recyclable plastics. They even invented their own glue from cashew nuts and sugar. Anyway, the point is the whole boat was completely recyclable and used naturally produced materials or reused others. The link is there, check it out for yourself, it's fascinating stuff.

The idea behind all of this is to increase awareness about human waste in general, but particularly plastic. If you read the Plastiki website it contains some scary marine pollution to plastic ratio statistics. The Plastiki undertook a voyage across the Pacific retracing the steps of an old voyage in the 1940's, the main reason for this was to raise awareness of the 'plastic soup': an approximately 200km square garbage patch of microscopic bits of plastic floating just below the surface. Their journey took them from San Francisco to Sydney right through the garbage patch. This phenomenon of human stupidity and disregard is a result of the ocean's currents all converging at this point, thus collecting all our waste in one big floating garbage pile.

The reason I'm saying all this is because I live next to the sea and walk along it every day. I would love to say that this particular part of Crete is a paradise. I understand it is a relatively big town with a working port and isn't a beach clad shore line of palm trees and bronzed bodies, but it brought home the Plastiki message for me.

In general this society seem wasteful and relatively short sited, I've often witnessed rubbish being tossed on the street, supermarkets throwing perfectly good plastic baskets in the general waste, and just not a lot of care for outside spaces. The traffic cutting measures are laughable, everywhere you go there are no parking signs yet you struggle to see them for the mountain of cars. We recently got a ticket on our car, I'm astonished the system actually worked that well to be able to issue a ticket. It was a justified ticket; the car was parked in a disabled spot. I could accept this were it not for the fact the disabled parking space is on an obscure back alley near no shops, doctors, physiotherapists, in fact anything of any note at all. And it is placed on a corner of a very narrow road on a steep incline. I would love to, without laughing of course, see a wheelchair user get into their chair from their car in this situation - another thing that stinks of box ticking, bureaucratic corruption.

I digress. Back to the walking along the sea front; the shore has been recently redeveloped, the seawall redone, a couple of park benches, some suspect landscaping (mostly using concrete or brick) and a few palm trees (which i learned recently the mayor got done for; he was buying them through his son's company. A very profitable business on a windy island where people can't drive properly.) Overall this face lift lacks something, there's no care, no maintenance, no usefulness, in short it's rubbish. Bringing me nicely on to my main point; all along the sea front on the rocks the result of human wastefulness and disregard is all too obvious. It's such a shame that somewhere so beautiful is treated in such a way. To be fair the other places on the island I have visited are beautiful and clean, but why then not keep your capital in the same way? For an island seemingly trapped in the past in many ways I hope this is one attitude they can drag into the future along with the rest of the world.