» Repair, re-use or recycle – Greek experiences

A recycled food container makes an attractive flower pot

The modern world is an increasingly ‘throw-away’ one. People choose to replace rather than repair, and manufacturing encourages this. It used to be commonplace to see older cars on the roads but not any more. Take your car to a garage and chances are they’ll put it on a computer that tells them which part to replace – replace, NOT repair. Not too many years ago that shoe or handbag that was chewed by your new puppy could be taken to a traditional cobbler. He may not be able to make it exactly like new, but he could repair it so it was still usable.

Rubbish bins, recycling centres and landfill sites all hold their share of items discarded as soon as anything happens to them. Our forebears wouldn’t have declared an item useless following a chip or crack, but many people today have been seduced into believing it must be replaced. The concept of repair is alien. Likewise the thought of using anything in less than perfect condition or finding a different use for something when its original purpose has disappeared.

Greece offers two angles here, as usual at each end of the scale.

Many Greek people have a ‘throw-away’ mentality, regularly discarding things that other westerners religiously recycle such as plastic bottles. Waste bins at the end of the tourist season are also testament to the Greek throw-away nature, filled with chairs, mattresses and other items of furniture that are no longer wanted. Local refuse services take anything left in, or around the bins, which encourages the practice. Greek people aren’t yet expected to sort their rubbish, or to pay for the disposal of bulkier items like in the UK. The state still happily does it all for them.

But in other areas the Greeks remain re-users and repairers:

Many people use old olive oil and feta cheese tins as plant pots and plastic bags are routinely re-used as bin liners. Some plastic bottles find a new life protecting electric cables in partially built houses – it’s not unusual to see a row of upturned plastic bottles along a wall, where one day there will be lights.

Our washing machine recently needed attention. The door had come off: the metal hinge had broken through. Replacement of the machine wasn’t even considered, nor was searching out a manufacturer’s spare part. A replacement hinge could be fashioned by a local metal worker at lower cost and much faster than tracking down a part.

A friend has a 15 yr old 4-wheel drive vehicle which needed a new front bumper complete with light fitments. Rather than send to the manufacturers for an expensive new part, the local garage had one made up locally, again at much less cost.

Local garages repair many older cars and other vehicles that would either have to be scrapped due to lack of skills and knowledge, or expensively repaired by specialist garages in other countries. I’ve read that Greece has followed other countries and introduced its own scheme to scrap older vehicles, giving payments both for the scrapped vehicle and towards buying a newer, more fuel efficient one. Somehow I can’t imagine that this will be the end of the ‘repair before replacing’ way of life.

There are many things that frustrate me about the Greek people, but I do like the fact that they still work by many traditional values.