When I lived in Malta, a friend of mine Camilla Appelgren started organising citizen-led cleanups across the island. The popularity of this with local people led to many doing such clean-ups under their own initiative and many more events being organised. Her work has also extended to campaigning for reductions in plastic packaging and straws and even lobbying the government on various matters relating to recycling and managing waste.
When I heard someone was doing something similar in Albania, I knew I had to get in touch. Meet Christy Loop- this is what she had to say!
Tell me about yourself and what brought you to Albania?
I am Christy Loop and I am a teacher and administrator at Albanian College Durres. My kids and I live in Durres and have been here since July 2015 after leaving the US in 2015 because my then-partner was sick with many chronic illnesses, and health care costs were driving me closer and closer to bankruptcy. We chose Albania because it was the opportunity to join a school as it was being developed and live affordably off one income. After a year, my partner made the choice to return to the US, back to his creature comforts and familiar pathways but I couldn’t leave Albania by that point, as I was completely enamoured with the beauty, ruggedness, and living a contemporary life along such a rich historical backdrop. At this point, I plan to stay a few more years.
What do you love about Albania?
There is a complex dichotomy here in Albania that makes it impossible for me to say I like this, I don’t like that. It seems that everything is a double-sided coin. I love the way in which Albanian friends will “give it to me straight,” and don’t mince words or try to put lipstick on a pig when they are talking about life, growing up here, who they are, who they think I am, etc. People are upfront with what they want to say to me, and that includes the scoldings that after three years, I don’t speak Albanian well enough at this point, something I agree with and am embarrassed about. The other side of that coin is that everyone has an opinion, and they are diverse but all feel strongly that they are right. This makes it difficult to have discussions sometimes, especially about things that require open-mindedness, like gay rights and, and sadly, even just throwing garbage in bins.
Tell me about your clean-up project- how did it start? What inspired you?
This was just a spontaneous thing. Usually, I bring garbage bags with me on walks or hikes, and by the end, they are full of plastic and other junk. It’s ironic to me to see such contemporary human waste spoiling the landscape of historical ruins, and I find myself wondering if someday, a few hundred years from now, someone will wander around the same places I am going and see diapers, beer cans, pieces of a Styrofoam cooler and marvel at the historical relevance of those, in the same way, I think about Berat castle, Durres Amphitheatre, or the ruins in Apollonia. Some how I doubt it. Trash is trash is trash, and it has its place, and it’s place is not in rivers or sitting among the poppies.
So, wherever I go, I take out the trash whenever I can. For this event, I knew my expat friends were looking for an opportunity to do the same thing. They’ve frequently expressed interest in cleaning up the landscape, and when I hike with others, they fill up their garbage bags as well. So I put out the word, and about 7 friends came as well as a few students from the school. Their mother is a friend of mine, and she encouraged them to get involved so they could complete service hours, which is a requirement of the school for every student. But ultimately, the real impact was on the people there on the beach who were strangers to us when we arrived.
A good Albanian friend had arranged a beach clean up the weekend before, and a young boy who lived locally joined in and filled up bags with his weight in trash. We took him to lunch after that, and he told us that he’d joined us because he thought it was cool that we were cleaning the beach where he lived and liked seeing people who cared about it. I loved hearing that from the future generation of Albania! The next weekend my friends and I went back, along with our two students, to finish the job. While we were cleaning, a mother and her two teenage daughters had been enjoying a Sunday walk along the beach and decided to also join in the cleanup.
So over the course of two weekends, we filled up about 25 garbage bags with medicine bottles, syringes, shoes and boots, pieces of coolers, plastic tubing, fishing net, and just general rubbish that found it’s way onto the beach from the nearby homes and brought in by the tide, and managed to pull in four unsuspecting locals into our efforts.
Have you tried to involve any council members with the initiative?
I believe strongly in the civic responsibility of private citizens. If you want to leave things up to elected officials, in any country, you are running the risk of nothing getting done because of the sheer work involved in managing a community. I would not say our council members or local officials do not care or would not get involved, I’m saying that their jobs are impossible if the people of the community don’t take ownership of their responsibilities as well-everyone has to work together. if you see something, pick it up and put it where it belongs. If my children told me that as manager of our home and house, it was my job to pick up their mess, I’d have a thing or two to say to them. So as a member of this community, it’s my responsibility to partake in its care and hopefully inspire others to fulfil our obligation to nature.
As someone recently said to me, “Earth does not belong to us, we belong to her.”
Why do you think Albania has a problem with pollution and waste?
In today’s modern economy, even in Albania, we won’t stop the flow of garbage- packaging, discarded items, a surprising number of single shoes…I’ve seen many items cast aside when they no longer serve their purpose. What the question be is why don’t people in Albanians, ex-pats and citizens, put their garbage in the proper place: recycling in recycling, trash in bins, etc?
I think one reason is that the bins are not readily available in many places. I’ve had to walk several blocks or more holding garbage that I find or have produced myself in Tirana. In Durres, where I live, it’s even harder to find public garbage bins.
Another reason is that they lack the social pressure to pick up their own garbage. Just yesterday I saw a group of young women coming out of a bar after celebrating a birthday with balloons. One of them thought it was hilarious to pop a balloon to scare her friends, then they continued down the sidewalk popping all of the balloons with something sharp. They had absolutely no awareness that they were littering the sidewalk with pieces of exploded balloons. There was simply no thought of what they were doing, and instead, they laughed and encouraged each other to keep going.
Schools, community groups, literature, social media all need to play a bigger role in creating the sense of disgust when they see someone toss something away, carelessly and inconsiderate of another person who then needs to pick it up in order to do what is needed, which is to walk a few steps, blocks, or even carry it home to put garbage in a bin.
What else can be done to help the cause?
I think putting the responsibility on the government as the sole entity responsible for doing something about trash spread across the beautiful landscape of this country is completely misplaced blame. The government could provide Public Service Announcements and certainly more bins in and around villages and towns, but it’s more complex than asking for more legislation or fines or intervention from elected officials.
This is a case of people talking to people, telling others to pick up their trash when they throw it around or taking it upon themselves to carry their trash until there is a proper place to discard it.
I would love to ask those young adventurers who have carried full bottles of soda and beer into hard to reach places, where they obviously have enjoyed picnics with friends, but then don’t carry the empty containers out. Why go to all the effort of carrying the items when they are full but not when they are lighter and empty? Until logic and reason can take over laziness and arrogance, I will continue to hike into those places with empty trash bags and come back out with their trash.
Will you be planning another cleanup?
Probably, but I don’t know when…stay tuned!
Follow The Balkanista!
