Earth Hour and Recycling in Greece

Today is one of Greece's Independence Day (the one from the Turks) and the Euangelismos of Mother of God; it is a national holiday here and Hubby says we should go to see the military parade in Syntagma. Maybe...

Anyway, this Saturday (28 March), 60 minutes from 20:30 is the Earth Hour, a campaign of WWF supported also by UN. I have never heard about it either in UK or in Japan, but here in Greece it is well publicised (even on tv) and the rate of participants per the national population is very high.

http://www.earthhour.org/

You might think; how wonderful are the Greeks who are so serious about the environment.

You should't. Here people do not have ecological mind. Very little recycling and very little conscience about cutting the energy consumption. Many think and feel that saving energy and recycling are a form of stinginess and the Greeks love generocity, not stinginess. There is something against their mentality.

When I moved to UK 5 years ago, there was very little recycling, while in Japan a rigorous regime had been in force already for years (the 'saving', if you don't know, is one of the national virtues of Japanese), but UK has been catching up very quickly and when I left there early this year, there was a reasonably working scheme. I believe it was somehow fictional, meaning that many of the 'recycled' materials are really brought to dumping ground, because the way of dividing the materials was far too loose to be fully operational (in Japan, we separate, for example, aluminium tin from iron one, while in UK, it is just 'metal'), but people have to start somewhere and need to be trained.

In Athens, I see some 'recycle' material collection bin, but it looks very dubious if the people do distinguish. Here in Piraeus, there are some show pieces of recycling bins only in central part, but in normal residencial parts.

Separating everyday garbage is much more important and much more difficult than just to turn off the light for 60 minutes.