Eco Hvar

Rubbish Management 2018

Published in Environment

Rubbish management is a hot topic, not to say hot potato, around the world at the moment, especially in Croatia, where the European Directives which were laid down some years ago are finally due to come into force on November 1st 2018.

Binning litter, do it right! Binning litter, do it right! Photo: Vivian Grisogono

Most visitors from other European Union countries have been shocked to find that on Hvar, up to now, there has been little attempt to separate household waste into recyclable, compostable and non-recyclable units. That is all set to change, as local authorities roll out the new programme. Households are being issued with bins and bags for separating recyclable and reusable materials from waste. Householders now have new contracts with the waste management company operating in their area. Inevitably, individuals will pay more in fees for the new system.

Mayor Nikša Peronja takes delivery of Jelsa's new rubbish carts, July 2014. Photo:Vivian Grisogono

Up to now, some places on Hvar have enjoyed doorstep collection services, while the majority of households have had the use of rubbish bins in the vicinity. In either case, the rubbish was collected on a regular basis, with more collections during the busy summer months. Under the new system, each household has a bin or a bag for mixed household waste, besides bags for recyclable waste. Different sizes are available, according to the individual needs of each household. Hvar Town is issuing general rubbish bins for 80, 240 or 1100 litres, or bags with similar capacities. Door-to-door collections will continue where there is direct road access to properties. Otherwise householders have to leave their waste at a designated spot at appointed times. Hvar Town has issued winter and summer schedules for the collections, the price list showing how the services are charged (in Croatian), and (in English) instructions for separating rubbish as required. 

Recycling bins in Hvar, 2014, waiting for their time to come. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

Rubbish is to be sorted into the different materials which can be recycled, and organic materuial which can be composted. Recyclabler materials are collected in the householders' bins or bags, or they can be put into the appropriate bins in the so-called 'green islands' (zeleni otoci) which are to be placed in various locations around Hvar's main settlements.

Recycling bins must be used properly for the system to work. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

The success of the new system depends on people's co-operation. Before the arrival of the rubbish containers and regular collection services on Hvar, waste disposal was a big problem. Rubbish was either burned or disposed of as and where, around the countryside and fields, in ruined buildings, in every nook and cranny where it was at least half hidden. Old habits die hard, and it is still all too obvious that many people, including youngsters, drop litter and dump rubbish thoughtlessly, selfishly and indiscriminately. The result is a mess, and, much worse, untold ecological damage and pollution.

Trying to get the message across on Jadrolinija ferries. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

It will certainly take a strong educational campaign to create compliance. We have to hope that the island will not sink back into a universal habit of littering, rubbish dumping and fly tipping. Of course, the law envisages fines for people guilty of flouting the rules, but I don't know anyone who believes that enforcement will be adequate, or that the threat of punishment will produce the desired effect.

Careless littering, a bad habit. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

We welcome the principle that less rubbish will be dumped in landfill. Separating materials for recycling will be an improvement on sending all types of waste to pollute the earth and sea. Croatia is due to have some 97 recycling yards to fulfil the Directives, with some 80% of their construction costs being financed by the EU, assuming that local authorities prepare their project proposals correctly and on time. It seems most local councils have delayed applying for finance for recycling depots until the last moment (you can read about this in Croatian here). From the recycling depots on Hvar, the separated materials will be shipped to the mainland. So far so good. But then? There are recycling works in Croatia (article in Croatian here), but the facilities have not developed to the extent that seemed to be promised back in 2006 (article in Croatian here).  So it is not clear what can happen to the recyclable materials from Hvar, other than storage in the hope of an eventual solution.

How not to dispose of poison packaging in Stari Grad's historic Ager. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

It is clear that we need to reduce the amount of non-degradable waste we produce, regardless of whether it can be recycled or not. Individuals in different countries are showing the way by example. One of these is Bea Johnson, whose website, 'Zero Waste Home' is a blueprint of ways for people to reduce their rubbish footprint. Her book of the same name1 is a number-one bestseller, which she has presented in numerous countries around the world. It is published in 20 languages, and has been translated into Catalan2 by Esther Penarrubia, agronomist and English teacher, who has also been spreading the word during her travels around Europe. On Friday March the 5th, in Stari Grad's elementary school, she presented the English version of the book to a receptive audience.

Esther with organizer Nora in Stari Grad. Photo: Jelena Gracin

The weather was fierce that evening, with rain and one of Stari Grad's famous high flood tides, so the relatively high turnout was witness to the real desire of local people to do something positive for their island environment.

A good turnout on a stormy night in Stari Grad. Photo: Jelena Gracin
Bea Johnson's prescription: "Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot (and only in that order) is my family’s secret to living waste-free since 2008!"Reuse is a logical way to reduce waste. Glass bottles and jars are the cleanest type of container for liquids. The old-fashioned system of washing and re-using bottles and jars provided secure employment for some, including disabled people. Unnecessary waste was prevented. Reuse was clearly more economical than creating new containers while spending on destroying the old ones. What is recycled glass used for? Very little goes to producing new glass products. In truth, recycling glass makes no sense at all.

Plastic containers for foods and liquids make no sense at all either. They are potentially harmful to human health. For instance the phthalates (used as plasticizers in plastic bottles as well as other uses) have been found to affect the human thyroid gland, and have been implicated in children's behavioural problems3. By contrast with glass, plastic food and drink containers should not be reused. Micro-plastics, which have the widest variety of uses, are now recognized as a major environmental scourge, alongside plastic bags. Not all plastics can be recycled effectively. Left in the environment they will last for hundreds of years, causing ever-increasing damage to wildlife. The only logical solution is to reduce the use of plastics to the barest minimum, and to revert to more environmentally friendly materials for food and drink packaging,such as Beeswrap for sandwiches.

There is reason for cautious optimism. There is worldwide awareness of how badly plastics have affected the environment, and there are many initiatives aiming to curb the problem.

Giving consumers the right to choose products without plastic packaging is a big step forward. Consumer power can drive change. With enough awareness, habits will change for the better and the world will be freed from an ever-increasing spiral of degradation. 

 © Vivian Grisogono 2018 

References

1. Johnson, B. 2013. Zero Waste Home, The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying your Life by Reducing your Waste. Scribner, New York (UK edition Penguin, 2016)

2. Johnson, B., Trans Penarrubia, E.,  Residuo Cero en Casa. pol-len edicions 

3. Engel, S.M., Miodovnik, A., Canfield, R.L., Zhu, C., Silva, M.J., Calafat, A.M., Wolff, M.S. 2010.  Prenatal Phthalate Exposure Is Associated with Childhood Behavior and Executive Functioning. Environmental Health Perspectives, 118: 565-571 (37 references)

 

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    MARA NORTH CONSERVANCY, Kenya — Under a fading sun, Kenya’s Maasai Mara came alive.

    A land cruiser passed through a wide-open savanna, where a pride of lions stirred from a day-long slumber. Steps away, elephants treaded single-file through tall grass, while giraffes peered from a thicket of acacia trees. But just over a ridge was a sight most safari-goers might not expect — dozens of herders guiding cattle into an enclosure for the night. The herders were swathed in vibrant red blankets carrying long wooden staffs, their beaded jewelry jingling softly.

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    Lions tussle in the tall grass of Mara North Conservancy.

    But elsewhere in Africa, the conservancy model has remained far out of reach.

    “Conservancies have the potential to lift pastoral communities out of poverty in many African landscapes. But starting a conservancy requires significant funding — money they simply don't have,” said Bjorn Stauch, senior vice president of Conservation International’s nature finance division.

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    Conservation International wanted to find a way for local communities to start conservancies and strengthen existing ones. Over the next three years, the organization aims to invest millions of dollars in new and emerging conservancies across Southern and East Africa. The funds will be provided as loans, which the conservancies will repay through tourism leases. This financing will jumpstart new conservancies and reinforce those already in place. The approach builds on an initial model that has proven highly effective and popular with local communities.

    “We’re always looking for creative new ways to pay for conservation efforts that last,” Stauch said. “This is really a durable financing mechanism that puts money directly in the pockets of those who live closest to nature — giving them a leg up. And it’s been proven to work in the direst circumstances imaginable.”

    © Will McCarry

    Elijah Toirai explains current conservancy boundaries and potential areas for expansion.

    Creativity from crisis

    In 2020, the entire conservancy model almost collapsed overnight.

    “No one thought that the world could stop in 24 hours,” said Kelvin Alie, senior vice president and acting Africa lead for Conservation International. “But then came the pandemic, and suddenly Kenya is shutting its doors on March 23, 2020. And in the Mara, this steady and very well-rounded model based on safari tourism came to a screeching halt.”

    Tourism operators, who generate the income to pay landowners' leases, found themselves without revenue. Communities faced a difficult choice: replace the lost income by fencing off their lands for grazing, converting it to agriculture, or selling to developers — each of which would have had drastic consequences for the Maasai Mara’s people and wildlife.

    © Will Turner

    A black-backed jackal hunts for prey.

    “But then the nature finance team at Conservation International — these crazy guys — came up with a wild idea,” Alie said. “In just six months they put this entirely new funding model together: loaning money at an affordable rate to the conservancies so that they can continue to pay staff and wildlife rangers.”

    Conservation International and the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association launched the African Conservancies Fund — a rescue package to offset lost revenues for approximately 3,000 people in the area who rely on tourism income. Between December 2020 and December 2022, the fund provided more than US$ 2 million in affordable loans to four conservancies managing 70,000 hectares (170,000 acres).

    The loans enabled families in the Maasai Mara to continue receiving income from their lands to pay for health care, home repairs, school fees and more. And because tourism revenues — not government funding — support wildlife protection in conservancies, this replacement funding ensured wildlife patrols continued normally, with rangers working full time.

    Born out of this emergency, we discovered a new way to do conservation.

    Elijah Toirai

    “The catastrophe of COVID-19 was total for us,” said Benard Leperes, a landowner with Mara North Conservancy and a conservation expert at Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association. “Without Conservation International and the fund, this landscape would have not been secured; the conservancies would have disintegrated as people were forced to sell their land to convert it to agriculture.”

    But it was communities themselves that proved the model might be replicable after the pandemic ended.

    “The conservancies had until 2023 before the first payment was due,” Toirai said. “But as soon as tourism resumed in mid-2021, the communities started paying back the loans. Today, the loans are being repaid way ahead of schedule.”

    “Born out of this emergency, we discovered a new way to do conservation.”

    A new era for conservation

    The high plateaus overlooking the Maasai Mara are home to the very last giant pangolins in Kenya.

    These mammals, armored with distinctive interlocking scales, are highly endangered because of illegal wildlife trade. In Kenya, threats from poaching, deforestation and electric fences meant to deter elephants from crops have caused the species to nearly disappear. Today, scientists believe there could be as few as 30 giant pangolins left in Kenya.

    Conservancies could be crucial to bringing them back. Conservation International has identified opportunities to provide transformative funding for conservancies in this area — a sprawling grassland northwest of Maasai Mara that is the very last pangolin stronghold in the country. The fund will help communities better protect an existing 10,000-hectare (25,000-acre) conservancy and bring an additional 5,000 hectares under protection. It provides a safety net, ensuring a steady income for the communities as the work of expanding the conservancy begins. With a stable income, communities can start work to restore the savanna and remove electric fences that have killed pangolins. And as wildlife move back into the ecosystem, the grasslands will begin to recover.

    In addition to expanding conservancies around Maasai Mara, Conservation International has identified other critical ecosystems where community conservancies can help lift people out poverty, while providing new habitats for wildlife. Conservation International has ambitious plans to restore a critical and highly degraded savanna between Amboseli and Tsavo National Parks in southern Kenya, as well as a swath of savanna outside Kruger National Park in South Africa.

    © Emily Nyrop

    A lone acacia tree in a sea of grass.

    Elephants, fire, Maasai and cattle

    Many of the new and emerging community conservancies have been carefully chosen as key wildlife corridors that would be threatened by overgrazing livestock.

    When the first Maasai Mara conservancies were established in 2009, cattle grazing was prohibited within their boundaries. When poorly managed, cattle can wear grasses down to their roots, triggering topsoil erosion and the loss of nutrients, microbes and biodiversity vital for soil health. It was also believed that tourists would be put off by the sight of livestock mingling with wildlife.

    © Emily Nyrop

    Cattle are closely monitored in the Maasai Mara to prevent overgrazing.

    However, over the years, landowners objected, lamenting the loss of cultural ties to cattle and herding. “That was when we changed tactics,” said Raphael Kereto, the grazing manager for Mara North Conservancy.

    Beginning in 2018, Mara North and other conservancies in the region started adopting livestock grazing practices to restore the savanna. Landowners agreed to periodically move livestock between different pastures, allowing grazed lands to recover and regrow,  mimicking the traditional methods pastoralists have used on these lands for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

    “Initially, there was a worry that maybe herbivores and other wildlife will run away from cattle,” said Kereto. “But we have seen the exact opposite — the wildlife all follow where cattle are grazing. This is because we have a lot of grass, and all the animals follow where there is a lot of grass. We even saw a cheetah with a cub that spent all her time rotating with wildlife.”

    “It's amazing — when we move cattle, the cheetah comes with it.”

    The loans issued by the fund — now called the African Conservancies Facility — will enhance rotational grazing systems, which are practiced differently in each conservancy, by incorporating best practices and lessons from the organization’s Herding for Health program in southern Africa.

    © Will Turner

    An elephant herd stares down a pack of hyenas.

    For landowners like Dickson Kaelo, who was among the pioneers to propose the conservancy model in Kenya, the return of cattle to the ecosystem has restored a natural order.

    “I always wanted to understand how it was that there was so much more wildlife in the conservancies than in Maasai Mara National Reserve,” said Kaelo, who heads the Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Association, based in Nairobi.

    “I went to the communities and asked them this question. They told me savannas were created by elephants, fire and Maasai and cattle, and excluding any one of those is not good for the health of the system. So, I believe in the conservancies — I know that every single month, people go to the bank and they have some money, they haven't lost their culture because they still are cattle keepers, and the land is much healthier, with more grass, more wildlife, and the trees have not been cut.

    “For me, it’s something really beautiful.”

    Further reading:

    Will McCarry is the content director at Conservation International. Want to read more stories like this? Sign up for email updates. Also, please consider supporting our critical work.

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