Eco Hvar

Caring for Hvar's Environment

Published in Environment

What inspired ECO HVAR for the environment

 

Caring for Hvar's Environment

 

The Island of Hvar is clean, relative to other places. Visitors always appreciate that, and many comment on it, although it is no more than they expect. After all, Hvar’s success as a tourist destination has depended on its reputation for clean land, sea and air.

By and large, the island’s good reputation is justified. But there is room for improvement. When I first started walking around the island’s countryside, many years ago, I was struck by two things. First, the amount of rubbish that was piled up here and there, although it was often hidden under bushes and undergrowth, and so not visible at first sight. Second, the surprising amount of herbicide that was used around the olive groves and vineyards. 

 

 

Two types of rubbish were evident, as everywhere in the supposedly civilized world: litter and rubble, the former spread by careless or uncaring individuals, the latter by irresponsible building firms. 

 

 

I am told that before there was organized rubbish collection across the island, it was the norm for household rubbish to be thrown into whatever space happened to be convenient, whether a neighbour’s dry well or some nearby ruined building. Now there are rubbish containers in every settlement, this problem has been lessened, although it is still in evidence here and there among islanders too set in their ways to change their habits.

 

Why do people, especially the young who are going to inherit this environment, drop litter? Take cigarette butts, for example. Most smokers are in the habit of discarding their fag-ends on the ground. Perhaps the thinking is that they are only small, so they don’t matter; or they will biodegrade; and/or they will do no harm. Many smokers also discard their cigarette packets on the ground, to join the more general litter created by the packaging from sweets, snack foods and drinks. The question of why this is happening becomes more complex when the littering is done by people, especially youngsters, right next to a rubbish bin.

 

When I lived in London, I routinely picked up litter as I walked my dogs through the local parks. I was sometimes thanked by people who witnessed this, especially by the park attendants. Here I do the same. I am not the only person to clear up rubbish from the environment. People who understand how important cleanliness is to Hvar’s future as a tourist destination are pleased and grateful. In recent years there has been an increase in actions to clean up beaches, paths and public places. The next major breakthrough will be to persuade people not to drop litter in the first place.

 

 

The use of pesticides surprised me as everyone I knew insisted that they farmed their land organically. It turned out not all of them were telling the truth. I have had interesting discussions with pesticide users over the years. Their reasoning ranges from “Well, it’s not really a poison” to “OK, it is a poison, but it’s the mildest possible and it’s perfectly safe” to “I have to use chemicals because it’s easiest and I don’t have time to do otherwise”. But the facts are that Hvar’s fields, notably the Stari Grad Plain, were cultivated naturally very successfully for centuries; the chemical pollution is damaging the soil, underground waters and the whole eco-structure of the island; and there is apparently a relatively high incidence of illnesses which might be attributable to pesticide use.

 

 

 

Of course, many people do farm their land without using pesticides. I hear that recently the dangers of pesticide use have been publicized on television. More people are turning to organic crop production, which is encouraging others to consider it. The wild flowers which brighten Hvar's countryside throughout the year are not only brilliantly beautiful, but essential to the island's ecology.

 

 

Hvar Island has stunning natural beauty and deserves to be clean. Any kind of pollution is unacceptable and harmful in all kinds of ways. ECO HVAR for the environment was conceived to help Hvar realize its potential as the cleanest island on the Adriatic.

 

© Vivian Grisogono 2013

Related items

back to top
You are here: Home environment articles Caring for Hvar's Environment

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Slow burn? The long road to a zero-emissions UK

    Extinction Rebellion protesters want a carbon-free UK by 2025. But can the financial and political hurdles be overcome?

    It is the near future. You wake in a house warmed by a heat pump that extracts energy from deep below the ground and delivers it to your home. (Your gas boiler was outlawed years ago.) You rise and make yourself a cup of tea – from water boiled on a hydrogen-burning kitchen stove. Then you head to work – in a robot-driven electric car directed by central control network to avoid traffic jams.

    At midday, you pause for lunch: a sandwich made of meat grown in a laboratory. At the end of the day, you are taken home by a robot car – through countryside festooned with solar panels and turbines.

    Continue reading...

  • Extreme conditions, loud birds and fresh food by boat – could you live on a remote island?

    The wardens of Britain’s small islands talk about daily life with little more than thousands of puffins for company. By Patrick Barkham. Photographs by Alex Ingram

    After supper, while Eddie Stubbings was washing up, huge flocks of puffins would come whirling past his kitchen window. Later, when the sun had finally dipped into the ocean, the Skomer night filled with the bizarre caterwauling of 350,000 pairs of manx shearwaters, which fly under the cover of darkness to burrows dotted across the small island.

    “Living on the island was absolutely amazing,” says Stubbings, 40. Alongside his partner, Bee Bueche, 41, he has completed six years working on Skomer, 720 acres of seabird-populated rocks off the Pembrokeshire coast.

    Continue reading...

  • Battle of Waterloo Bridge: a week of Extinction Rebellion protests

    Group’s ongoing peaceful disruption in London is gaining it global attention and new members

    On Monday morning a strange sight appeared, edging its way through the buses, taxis and shoppers on Oxford Street in London.

    A bright pink boat, named Berta Cáceres after the murdered Honduran environmental activist, was being pulled carefully through the traffic, eventually coming to a halt in the middle of one of London’s busiest thoroughfares.

    Continue reading...

  • We are not yet doomed: the carbon cutters determined to save the world

    An orchestra, a village, an entire country: the movement to rein in greenhouse gas emissions is growing

    We are all doomed, it is said. Carbon dioxide is amassing in the atmosphere at levels not seen for millions of years when there were trees at the South Pole and Florida was under water. We have barely a decade to make amends. Protesters are on the streets.

    But huge numbers of people have not given up. Not yet. Call them the carbon cutters. They are companies and cities, niche groups and nations. They are commuters and communes, off-gridders and off-setters, investors and institutions – and countless individuals, cutting their meat intake, installing solar panels, eschewing gas guzzlers and long-haul flights.

    Continue reading...

  • 'Not what you expect in Doncaster': suspected piranhas found in lake

    Fears for wildlife after fierce predators apparently discovered in Yorkshire

    Late on Monday night, a reporter at the Doncaster Free Press received an unusual phone call. A piranha, one of the world’s fiercest predators normally found stalking the waters of the Amazon basin, had apparently been discovered in a lake in Doncaster.

    There were dramatic rumours of ducks being massacred and other wildlife being torn to shreds by the razor-toothed fish in the freezing waters of Martinwells Lake.

    Continue reading...

  • 'Decades of denial': major report finds New Zealand's environment is in serious trouble

    Nation known for its natural beauty is under pressure with extinctions, polluted rivers and blighted lakes

    A report on the state of New Zealand’s environment has painted a bleak picture of catastrophic biodiversity loss, polluted waterways and the destructive rise of the dairy industry and urban sprawl.

    Environment Aotearoais the first major environmental report in four years, and was compiled using data from Statistics New Zealand and the environment ministry.

    Continue reading...

  • Mark Carney tells global banks they cannot ignore climate change dangers

    Financial sector warned it risks losses from extreme weather and its stakes in polluting firms

    The global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian.

    In an article published in the Guardian on Wednesday aimed at the international financial community, Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, and François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Banque de France, said financial regulators, banks and insurers around the world had to “raise the bar” to avoid catastrophe.

    Continue reading...

  • Why nightingales are snubbing Berkeley Square for the Tiergarten

    Scientists, including a descendant of Charles Darwin, are researching the birds’ preference for Berlin

    They were once among Britain’s most beloved singers, their “murmurs musical” giving melancholy poets solace in their darkest hours. But these days the world-famous warblers are more likely to be found jamming with jazz musicians in neglected Berlin parks than serenading Londoners in Berkeley Square. Some even claim that their latest outpourings feature elements of German techno.

    Luscinia megarhynchos, the common nightingale, has been shunning the UK since the 1960s, during which time the population has slumped by 90%. The number of birds in Berlin, however, is on the rise. According to cautious estimates by the city senate, the German capital’s nightingale population grew by 6% every year from 2006 to 2016: “a very high rate”, said Johannes Schwarz, a species conservation officer, who puts the current number of nesting pairs at between 1,300 and 1,700.

    Continue reading...

  • Could flexitarianism save the planet?

    Scientists say a drastic cut in meat consumption is needed, but this requires political will

    It has been known for a while that the amount of animal products being eaten is bad for both the welfare of animals and the environment. People cannot consume 12.9bn eggs in the UK each year without breaking a few.

    But the extent of the damage, and the amount by which people need to cut back, is now becoming clearer. On Wednesday, the Lancet medical journal published a study that calls for dramatic changes to food production and the human diet, in order to avoid “catastrophic damage to the planet”.

    Continue reading...

  • How Native American tribes are bringing back the bison from brink of extinction

    The continent’s largest land mammal plays crucial role in spiritual lives of the tribes

    On 5,000 hectares of unploughed prairie in north-eastern Montana, hundreds of wild bison roam once again. But this herd is not in a national park or a protected sanctuary – they are on tribal lands. Belonging to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of Fort Peck Reservation, the 340 bison is the largest conservation herd in the ongoing bison restoration efforts by North America’s Indigenous people.

    The bison – or as Native Americans call them, buffalo – are not just “sustenance,” according to Leroy Little Bear, a professor at the University of Lethbridge and a leader in the bison restoration efforts with the Blood Tribe. The continent’s largest land mammal plays a major role in the spiritual and cultural lives of numerous Native American tribes, an “integrated relationship,” he said.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2019 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.