Just visualize for a moment the many efforts the world powers are doing to establish common responsibilities for our globe, there are leagues of nations, the united nations, the united states of Europe, USA, and so on and so forth; we have the NATO to watch over peace and war, we have Unicef for the children and so many organisations to watch over human rights and there we have Green Peace and thousands of environmental associations worldwide, even yearly world conferences to discuss healthy conditions for the only basis we have for us to live on and from and for the generations to follow.

In-spite of all these well-meant efforts we are not able to get the slow killing of our world under control because we cannot get it into the heads of industrial states that we have to make heavy compromises for the sake of our future. The world belongs to all of us, we are all responsible for the health of it; the usual answer is… we cannot fulfill the necessary steps because jobs would be lost to people….somehow this is wrong politics…we should not create jobs that are causing damage to our world in the first place. The one problem are world rules to follow, the other is to make the individual aware of the situation, all individuals; if we would all in our small environment do our duties, we would have half the problem solved.

The team of Cyprus Observer has decided on a thumb rule: we want to entertain our readers with informative but positive reports, avoid to bathe in murders and negative events. We want our readers to sit back with their cup of coffee and enjoy reading our paper, but we need to take up issues that concern us all and where we might initiate the one or other reaction.

There were numberless efforts done in the past; I remember the one, I think it was in 2001 that the wife of the Turkish Ambassador invited school classes and adults, local and forein residents, distributed herself plastic bags to clean the area around the Castle of Kyrenia. When at the end she thanked everybody, the kids went to the nearest kiosk and bought themselves an ice cream, opened them and….threw the paper on the road. We have at least five official environment associations in the Northern part of the island but, when I spoke to one of them, they said: We continue to bring our complaints to the attention of the Presidency but there is no successful result, the presidential eyes are not even aware of the problem, there are many more important things on the agenda.

On many beaches private people have undertaken to collect the rubbish and bring it to the attention of their municipality. There was for three years an active organization ‘Keep our sea clean’, it no longer exists. There was the huge educational success of the North Cyprus Children Conference organized by the Kaleidoscope Travel Agency and more or less all the schools and colleges were involved to do their part, even composting machines were developed by the young researchers. The teachers and Ministry of Education made it an official subject, but the project had to be stopped because no support was given any more to continue. Two companies declared in an open letter via the media that they would take over the task to regularly clean the highway between Kyrenia and Nicosia, they placed big baskets along the road, emptied them occasionally but it has all stopped, they must have realized that all efforts have been in vain.

Whenever I go from Kyrenia to Nicosia I feel the bitter taste of my gall bladder rising into my throat seeing all the rubbish by the side of the roads. It is not the first time that I write about these matters in my column but I have the feeling that we must continue to make a noise.

There is the saying ‘Like Master Like Man’ or in German: ‘Wie der Herr so’s G’scherr’ that means if the elected representatives of the communities do not care, the voters can turn their back to the problem, they have downloaded their obligations onto the shoulders of the ruling body. This is wrong. It is also not enough to organize groups with plastic bags to collect the rubbish others have thrown out of the car window; that will not help at all to solve the problem.

In our street up hill to Ilgaz the residents have the feeling they are allowed to dispose of their garden waste on the other side of the road, either into the ravine, or stuffed between the bushes, distributed over the fields together with household rubbish trusting that the Municipality Roads Department will eventually take it up. The other residents see it done everywhere and they go and do it themselves, why not? On building sites along our road the entire debris is unloaded down into the ravine. There was one little warning sign: Do not unload rubbish into the ravine but this sign has gone down with the debris. There is a municipality service the residents can call to remove the garden waste but they should not mix it with household rubbish, as the garden waste is supposed to go to the composting area. I had it done, a full truck had cost me TL 30 which is really affordable.

It clearly shows that we all are the culprits, just caring for the small area around our living space, the rest has nothing to do with us. It also shows that mild educational measures are not enough. We must approach the government to make it a law and put up signs with the clear warning that littering is forbidden and how much it will cost when caught doing it. There is still some space left for billboards among the ones advertising casinos and hotels.