Thank The Crisis for less garbage

In the Greek capital, the volume of garbage has fallen by about 30%, due to the country's financial crisis.

This is not because people have begun to embrace a more frugal lifestyle, but simply because households cannot afford basic needs.
In Athens, the largest municipality of Greece, the volume of garbage has fallen by 29% in 2011. Deputy mayor A. Varelas says that in 2010 this drop was around 5 to 6%, but by October 2011 it had reached 27%. “The data for the last two months of 2011 are distorted due to the prolonged garbage strike, but it seems that the reduction in household garbage exceeded 30%.”

The quality of garbage has also changed. Gone are the large cartons of appliances such as fridges and televisions. This is not due to the new phenomenon of immigrants searching cans for recyclables, but to the drastic cut of expenses on the part of households.
It is striking that lately trash cans contain virtually no leftovers. A typical example is the lack of pizza cartons, while two years ago it was not unusual to find ten per can, often with a lot of uneaten pizza still inside. The deputy mayor adds: “These are all but gone now. The cans no longer contain large garbage bags, either. 95% of trash is found in small bags, because households produce less garbage.”

In the open air markets (held once a week in every neighbourhood of the capital) a new category of people has appeared, the leftover collectors. Mr. Varelas says that when the producers pack up after noon, these people ask the cleaning crews to delay cleaning the street until they have time to pick up any eatables among the discarded fruit and vegetables. These new collectors are not the typical homeless in rags, but neatly dressed people of every age who patiently wait to get whatever they can from the unsalable produce thrown away.

Source: Avgi newspaper (in Greek)