Corfu experiences rubbish crisis as holiday season begins

Interior minister says the island’ refuse crisis ‘undermined not only the image of the island but of the whole of Greece’

Rubbish holiday? Refuse piled up in the resort of Sidari on the island of Corfu (Barry Pollard)

Reports from Corfu indicate that the popular Greek island has been undergoing a waste crisis for several months.

Numerous British visitors to the holiday favourite have watched with alarm as mounds of rubbish piled up in holiday resorts and the interior.

The crisis has its roots in a legal dispute over a landfill site outside the small village of Temploni in the middle of the island. Temploni residents had blocked access to refuse trucks when the village’s landfill site reached full capacity.

A new site was found near Lefkimmi, but residents there blocked access.

Last week riot police were deployed to allow refuse trucks through, and according to the state broadcaster, ERT TV, they resorted to deploying stun grenades to clear a path.

As a result of the stalemate, rubbish has been steadily accumulating. The town of Sidari, a tourist favourite, has had waste on roadsides waiting for collection for two months.

At one stage the Minister for the Interior, Panos Skourletis, told the Greek parliament the rubbish “undermined not only the image of the island but of the whole of Greece”.

One British visitor to Corfu, Barry Pollard, told The Independent: ‘’The stink was in a 10-metre radius of the bins.”

In 2015, the European Commission referred Greece to the EU Court of Justice over poor waste management.

At the time, the Commission’s concerns related to the Temploni landfill which had been operating in breach of EU waste and landfill legislation.

July and August are the peak months for tourism to Corfu, and the problem appears to have been solved – for this summer at least – just in time.