Earth Day is actually the 22nd, but today in Skopje a small group of people picked up trash on Mount Vodno to help clean up this part of the earth. It was a small gesture as Skopje and Macedonia as a whole has a huge trash problem. Trash is everywhere. When I take photos I must look through the viewfinder very carefully to make sure there is no visible trash.
The pedestrian street is very clean but it is always on show. The City Park and Mt. Vodno have trash everywhere. Yes, there are trash cans, but people either don't use them or they do and no one bothers to empty the full containers. Eventually, the wind blows the overflowing trash into the bushes, trees, and river. The trash issue is much worse in smaller cities with plastic bottles clogging up the streams.
The effort today was more of a token gesture to get press coverage and plant a seed about not littering.
One of the Skopje mayors made an appearance at the trash pickup. Four press cameras huddled around him and when there was a piece of white paper next to the trail, all four cameramen focused their lenses on him picking up trash.
There are recycling bins for paper and plastic. The paper seems to just get wet and eventually is transferred to the trash bins. The Roma people make daily rounds to pick up the plastic bottles for recycling. Glass and aluminum is not recycled. There are battery bins in the larger grocery stores, but no one here recycles used batteries. I've been told that the batteries are trucked to Austria for recycling. Landfills are almost nonexistent in Macedonia so the garbage is mostly dumped along the roads and rivers.
Our friend Angel who was our guide to Matka Canyon and to Prilep said we don't need signs to get around. He said to just follow the trash and we'll be on the right path.
Macedonia is too beautiful to trash. Maybe this small effort will pay off someday.
The pedestrian street is very clean but it is always on show. The City Park and Mt. Vodno have trash everywhere. Yes, there are trash cans, but people either don't use them or they do and no one bothers to empty the full containers. Eventually, the wind blows the overflowing trash into the bushes, trees, and river. The trash issue is much worse in smaller cities with plastic bottles clogging up the streams.
The effort today was more of a token gesture to get press coverage and plant a seed about not littering.
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| US Ambassador to Macedonia |
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| The results after just 45 minutes |
There are recycling bins for paper and plastic. The paper seems to just get wet and eventually is transferred to the trash bins. The Roma people make daily rounds to pick up the plastic bottles for recycling. Glass and aluminum is not recycled. There are battery bins in the larger grocery stores, but no one here recycles used batteries. I've been told that the batteries are trucked to Austria for recycling. Landfills are almost nonexistent in Macedonia so the garbage is mostly dumped along the roads and rivers.
Our friend Angel who was our guide to Matka Canyon and to Prilep said we don't need signs to get around. He said to just follow the trash and we'll be on the right path.
Macedonia is too beautiful to trash. Maybe this small effort will pay off someday.
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