Post by Bozur on Aug 18, 2009 14:48:39 GMT -5
Taking out the trash in Montenegro
14/08/2009
The country ponders how to tackle its increasing litter problem.
By Brian Salmi for Southeast European Times in Podgorica -- 14/08/09
Downtown Podgorica is one of the few places in Montenegro that is litter-free. [Getty Images]
The Montenegrin government will be better able to break its citizens of their penchant for littering if the country, which is blighted by trash from one end to the other, is first cleaned up, says Robert Cialdini, Arizona State University psychology professor.
Cialdini, who has conducted a great deal of research to better understand the minds of litterbugs, told Southeast European Times, "Our research indicates that people are less likely to litter into a clean, than a littered environment."
Jovecevic (not his real name), a native Montenegrin who works on tourism industry related issues for an international NGO, says the best, perhaps only, way to clean up is through compulsory national service.
"If the kids understand that they are going to have to clean up the mess they make, when they get older, they will be less likely to make a mess and they will police their peers and the older generations."
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While in some instances, European militaries enforce litter clean up as part of military duty, Montenegro abolished conscription in 2006.
Jovecevic says Montenegrins will not voluntarily clean up garbage, nor will they do so for pay. "They think it is beneath them. They think nothing of littering but they will not clean up their mess."
Indeed, the only spot in Montenegro that you can count on being litter-free is in the downtown core of the capital, Podgorica, where well paid Roma clean the streets and parks around the parliament building daily. "Even with all the poverty in the country, Montenegrins would not dream of taking one of those jobs," laments Jovecevic.
Tourism is Montenegro's primary industry and many tourists are aghast at what they find when they visit the country. Earlier this year, the influential German news magazine Der Spiegel opined that, along with Montenegro's growing reputation for poor service, high prices and shortages of water and electricity, Montenegrin litterbugs will chase tourists away.
"We need to fix the real threats to our economy posed by trash, more than we need to protect against any hypothetical threat of armed invasion," says Jovecevic. "Besides, when we join NATO, which we will, no one is going to mess with us, except the litterbugs, as you call them," he adds with a chuckle.
Cialdini believes that any anti-littering public awareness campaign Montenegro might roll out would be more effective if the ads showed pristine environments. In 1970, one of the most memorable public service commercials ever aired attacked Americans for their littering habits.
Known as "The Crying Indian", the commercial showed a Native American Indian elder weeping as he mourned what pollution had done to a once beautiful land. Cialdini says the commercial would have been even more effective, "if the Indian cried after seeing someone throw litter in to a clean environment, rather than into a littered environment".
Cialdini's research suggests people are least likely to litter after they have witnessed someone discard trash into a clean environment.
www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2009/08/14/feature-02