The Environment and Cyprus

Hello again readers!
I am in my final hours of my time here in Cyprus!  I wanted my final post to be about one of the huge issues facing this beautiful island: the environment.  The island is pristine and full of nature and wildlife as well as crystal clear oceans, but much of it has been tainted by foresting, mining, and other environmental atrocities.
One of the main places this was apparent was when we were driving over the Kyrenia mountains on the way to the town of Kyrenia in North Cyprus.  Our tour guide informed us of all the disastrous mining that had happened here in search of copper and other minerals that island of Cyprus is known for exporting.  The destruction was apparent as we drove:

It might be hard to see in this picture, but an entire section of this mountain appears to have been blasted away.  It literally looks like someone cut it with a knife.  It doesn't look like a natural feature to me anyways.  Other things we saw were even more obvious results of lack of human care for the environment:

The first picture above shows an open air mine using a technique called quarrying.  The whole mountain range was littered with similar operations.  The bottom picture shows a typical industrial station, many of these were scattered throughout the Kyrenia mountains as well.  There are no restrictions or regulations on this mining because North Cyprus is not subject to international law due to its illegal status.  Therefore, they can blast away all they want without retribution!  Another thing to notice about the mountains in these pictures is how barren they are:

The above picture shows the south side of the mountains (facing Nicosia) in the background.  Contrast with the North side of the Kyrenia mountains (facing Kyrenia and the North coast of Cyprus):

For some reason, the North side of the mountains has not been treated as poorly as the South side, allowing one to observe the desecration of the mountain range that has occurred.  Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done about this as I said before due to the stalemate between the legal Republic of Cyprus and the illegal occupied North Cyprus.
Mining is not the only issue in Cyprus.  Trash can literally be found on every beach and every part of nature where tourists have been!  In Polis, we hiked the trail near the Baths of Aphrodite.  The whole trail was littered with old bottles, cans, cigarette butts, and more.  While I was walking, I became angry by how poorly the environment was being treated by visitors.  I picked up as much trash as I could and stowed it in my backpack that I had brought with me for the hike until we reached the end of the trail where I could throw it in a waste bin.  I couldn't fathom why someone would litter such pristine nature as this trail.  It was absolutely beautiful!  There were goats all along the trail, grazing and making silly noises as we passed:

I'm actually not sure if these were goats of if they were the famous Mouflon of Cyprus.  Mouflon are wild mountain sheep that were almost hunted to extinction in the early 20th century.  The reason I suspect that these animals may have been Mouflon is because of the "baaaaaa" sound I heard.  Haha.  I don't know if goats baaaaaa or not???
In addition to the animals that lived here, there was a ton of vegetation and rock formations contrasting with the ocean that produced extreme beauty in combination with the mountains:

The hike offered picturesque views throughout its entire duration, and even though I spent about 4 hours in the hot sun and our group got lost after missing the right trail, the beauty was enchanting and well worth the heat and exhaustion from walking.  I barely made a dent in the amount of trash that was all over the trail, but I tried to feel hopeful that the trail was left better than how I had found it.  I don't get why people are too lazy to hold on to their garbage (rubbish as it is known here in Cyprus) until they get to the end.  Why not preserve the nature and leave it as untouched as possible?  I was not even able to carry the entire load of the trash I had picked up the whole way on my back.  A friend on the hike with me generously carried the load for me for part of the time :D.
Despite all of these issues, there are people in Cyprus working to change the environment and the way tourists and others think of the landscape here.  One of the best organizations that I researched, and volunteered for on my last day here in Cyprus, is called Cans for Kids!  They collect aluminum and steel cans and convert them into materials that can be sold to recycling companies.  The money for the aluminum and steel materials is converted into medical equipment for the Makarios Children's Hospital in Nicosia, a place that I got to visit (talked about in a previous blog post).  This morning, I was given a tour of the operations that this organization does in this lovely van:

The logo shown on the van is displayed on all the medical equipment and wards that Cans for Kids has donated to the Makarios Hospital.  I saw the labels while I was there!  The back of the van is used for collecting bags of cans that are left in cages all over Cyprus that are designated for the charity.  They look like this:

Most of the cages are actually bigger than the one pictured here, but they all show the Cans for Kids logo with the explanation of the organization and its mission.  Lakis, the guy who co-founded the organization with his wife Rosie, drove me in this van to several collection points around the winding street maze of Nicosia.  He picked up the bags of cans that had been left there and put them in the back of the van.  Upon picking me up, I donated my own small sum of coca-cola cans that I had stashed with the intention of donating to this organization and loaded them in the back of the van as well!
Lakis then drove me to the municipal recycling center in Nicosia, on the outskirts near the Kyrenia mountains and buffer zone.  We came to this area, designated by the government for Cans for Kids:

As you can see, there are piles and piles of bags of cans! Thousands of them in one area, with more donations every day!  The cans are made from either aluminum or steel.  Before working here, I had no idea cans were made from steel.  The steel cans need to be separated from the aluminum cans, as the aluminum baling machine will only accept aluminum.  I learned to tell the difference between steel cans and aluminum cans quickly.  The steel cans are duller, heavier, and have either an "Fe" for iron on the side of the can or a magnet symbol, as the steel is magnetic.  Aluminum is not magnetic and therefore the two types of cans can be separated on this property alone.  However, it is easier to just examine the labels and the sheen of the cans.
The machine used to produce bales of aluminum looks like this:

The cans enter the large chamber shown in the second and third pictures, and are propelled upwards.  The machine will reject any steel that may have accidentally entered the aluminum stream and will expel it into the trash can shown in the above picture.  Cans for Kids does not throw away the steel cans, they sell it to steel merchants who will recycle the cans that way.  The aluminum cans then pass through the red chute shown in the top picture, where they then enter the large pressure chamber you can see in the top picture on the right.  Here, a piston applies over 200 barrs of pressure to produce an aluminum cube, called a bale.  The cubes are then sent to recycling companies to be refashioned into new products.  Here is a wall of the cubes that the machine produces:

Lakis told me that each cube contains between 700-800 cans!  The cubes take about 3 minutes for the machine to make.  The wall here has over a ton of aluminum bales that will be sold to recycling companies.  As I said before, the money for the cans is used to buy medical equipment that Makarios Children's Hospital needs.  This charity is cool because it kills two birds with one stone: it helps to alleviate the environmental situation in Cyprus and helps support the needs of sick children as well!
I spent a couple hours at this site sorting through steel and aluminum cans with some other volunteers!  There was this ginormous truck filled with cans:

That mountain of cans you see will all be turned into the aluminum cubes eventually.  I helped unload that massive collection truck above and then went through the bags with the other volunteers to separate the aluminum and the steel!  It was really fun, actually, even with the extreme Cyprus heat!  I can think of no better way to spend my last day in Cyprus than to support pediatric medicine and the environment, two causes I am extremely passionate about and dedicated to improving!
If you are interested in learning more about Cans for Kids, you can look at these links:
http://www.cansforkids.org/
https://www.facebook.com/CyprusCansForKids
Lakis and Rosie invited me to their house, with the same hospitality that all the other Cypriots I have met have shown me, for coffee and to explain what they do before we actually went out and did all the can sorting and stuff.  They told me that they believe Cyprus is about 10 years behind the rest of the world in implementing environmental policies and programs.  One of the main things that Cans for Kids does in addition to recycling and donating medical equipment is educating youth about the environment and the importance of conservation and recycling.  They visit schools and also invite schools to come to the site that I went to today so they can learn about where there trash goes and how they can use trash for a cause.  As a result of the kids learning, they take home their new environmental awareness and convince their parents, who Lakis told me are less environmentally inclined, to start recycling.  The Cypriots are very compassionate people and they are motivated to recycle by the fact that Cans for Kids recycles with the end goal of purchasing medical equipment for sick children.  The organization is wonderful, and I learned a lot myself about recycling and its possible uses for charity, something I thought I already knew quite a bit about!  I really felt I made a difference, even if for a short time, working with Lakis and Rosie!  This was the perfect experience to end my Cyprus trip.
To close, I hope you all will be inspired to be more conscious about waste and recycling.  We only have one home and it is so worth saving and preserving for our children and grand-children.  God gave us this earth to care for and we must answer His call to care for it.  Lakis and Rosie have managed to start an environmental revolution in Cyprus that hopefully will change the way people think about the environment here.
I may not get to write in this blog again, so I hope that you all have enjoyed the posts I have written.  If I think of anything that I left out, I will write in here again, but for now, goodbye from Cyprus.  This is the last post you will read from me in Cyprus.  In just an hour and a half now, I begin my return journey to America, my homeland!  I am excited to take home my stories and experiences as well as gifts to my family!  This study-abroad trip has truly been a blessing and I am so grateful for it.  I would like to take this moment to thank my Grandma Carole especially for the support she provided to make this trip possible for me.  I am so blessed and overwhelmed by your generosity Grandma!  Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.  You have truly given me a gift that will stay with me for the rest of my life!  To my friends and family back home, I will see you soon and can't wait to give you a warm embrace and hear about your lives!  To the people I have met in Cyprus, thank you for your hospitality and generosity.  Your culture is truly amazing and the people I have met here will remain in my heart and prayers for the remainder of my life!  If anyone reading this blog is considering studying abroad and is questioning whether or not it's worth it, don't hesitate.  It will change your perspective and offer you opportunities you could not have imagined before!
-Julia