What Garbage??

As so often happens among Aegean islands, small squabbles, usually concerning fishing,

politics or who has the best dancers, emerge, are highlighted for a while, and then dissipate over the Aegean Sea. Occasionally though, an unusual crises crops up and takes center stage as it did on Ikaria in 2012.With Ikaria entering the disposable material age years ago, one could no longer burn tidy little bags of garbage in ones back yard, and with the increase of tourist every summer, the amount of garbage exceeded the local capacity to handle the overflow. The Ikarian officials invested in new Mercedes Benz garbage trucks, put out a variety of bins to collect recyclables, and opened up a dump in the middle of the island to deal with the abundance of discarded rubbish. Slowly though, the dump filled up and could no longer handle the constant arrival and dumping of the garbage trucks, and was forced to close. This presented a dilemma for the local officials as the bins brimmed over, and the garbage started to pile up in the streets.

Sometime during the discussions of what to do with this aggregate of trash, a decision was reached by the local authorities to pile the garbage onto a barge and take it somewhere, but where? The approved suggestion was to secretly, in the dark of night, float this barge to the neighboring islands of Fourni. Since the islands are sparsely populated, there would be ample room to accommodate the ever increasing collection of trash from Ikaria. The garbage was quickly gathered and loaded onto an enormous barge and deployed for its’ two hour trip to Fourni.

The secrecy of this mission unfortunately was compromised when the locals on Fourni, hearing from an inside source, of the covert Ikarian operation, mounted their own stealth counterattack. There to meet the phantom barge, in the dead of night, was a delegation of Fournotes, who adamantly forced the unwanted and malodorous barge to turn around and make a hasty retreat back to Ikaria.

Stuck with this smelly barge, authorities once again met to decide the outcome of this traveling garbage pile. In the meantime, Ikarians were becoming irritated with the

slow progress of the garbage issue, and public resentment resonated across the island. Finally, after weeks and much consternation, negotiations by the local authorities were completed for the acceptance of the barge by another neighboring island. This island, seeing the profitable silver lining in the Ikarian trash, demanded payment up front in order to take in the garbage for the rest of the year. So, if by chance you are island hopping around the Aegean Sea be sure to keep a lookout for the floating garbage pile, but then again you probably will smell it before you see it.