The Economist for October 28 contained a short but interesting article on Albania. It was titled, Albanian economy, Good times, at last. And it began with these words, It is not hard to find bad news in Albania…Yet over the past five years the country has undergone a little-noticed but remarkable transformation… As I travel around the city of Tirana what I see and the people I talk to echo the truth in this line. The State Department categorizes international civil service posts on a 1-5 scale. 1 means it is easy to live and work in a place while 5 labels the post the most difficult assignment—the only more difficult is a post labeled war zone. Albania today is a 5, but I think that classification may need to be revised. I hope the reasons for this will become clear as I continue this blog over the weeks ahead.

Moving on, the subject for today is trash. And the summary statement, if you do not care to read about trash, is—there are worse places and there are better places. Coming into the city you pass roadsides littered with trash of all kinds—from bottles to plastics to papers to furniture. Phone cards, cigarette packs, and anything else that is portable, once used, is thrown down, and it all gathers wherever it can. One day I saw a Mercedes slightly slow down, then the driver’s door opened and a glass bottle was thrown into the median of the road. Alleys and byways have piles of inorganic and, particularly by the markets, organic trash. But that is not unusual for many countries—in fact the only unusual thing about Albanian trash is that not a single piece bears the golden arches logo (which was clearly the most common litter in every one of the ten European countries I cycled through this fall). The simple reason is that Albania is one of the few countries in Europe that has no McDonalds. It has its counterfeit McDonalds called Kolonat that stands just across from the Sheraton and in the clear line of sight of Mother Teresa (her statue, that is—she was ethnic Albanian and is memorialized there in stone). Kolonat is complete with golden arches (though they are slightly pointed) and happy meals, but you search there in vain for a genuine BigMac or a hot fudge sundae or real American-style brewed coffee.

People do not seem to feel that littering is inappropriate, and it shows. However, that may be changing and there are encouraging signs. Household or restaurant trash, to be specific, is taken care of in a very reasonable way. Scattered around the city are large dumpsters.
They are accessible to everyone and everyone seems to carry their personal trash to them and deposit it there. They may not be sightly and in the summer may develop an odor, but at least that trash is concentrated and it is picked up very regularly. In fact it is picked up twice—first by Roma who dive in and gather glass and aluminum for recycling, then by the trash collectors who do a reasonably thorough job of cleaning up bins that have overflowed their borders. The trash is then taken to a main dump outside the city. Besides this there are some litter bins scattered about, and some people use them. And every day people appear early in the morning to clear dust and trash away from the front of their stores (something they will do several times during the day), while others greet the dawn by cleaning the common streets. I think there is a growing awareness on the part of some of the need to do more, and I think it is helping and will help even more in the years ahead.

Having said that, if I had one trashy suggestion to offer Albania it would be for them to follow the Irish. By this, I mean for them to ban plastic bags, particularly those that food purchases are put in. I once bought a loaf of bread (wrapped in plastic, of course), and motioned to the market clerk that she did not need it put in a second plastic bag. She was indignant and the best interpretation of her broken English that I could make was, when in Albania, do as the Albanians do—she would not allow me to leave her store without the bag in a bag. I find this everywhere. Store personnel are personally offended if you try to refuse a plastic bag, and they simply will not allow it. At the major shopping center of Tirana I purchased a CD, and when I indicated to the clerk that I would put it in the laptop computer bag I was carrying she was dismayed. Such a thing would never happen on her watch! And those bags account for a considerable amount of the total litter of the nation. The ban has made a huge difference in Ireland, I know it would in Albania. And I also know it would in America as well…

In writing pieces for this blog I try to put a bit of spiritual message in each time. Not because I feel obligated, but because I honestly see the message in the topic. Doing that for trash may be a bit of a stretch, but I don’t think so. I believe that when God gave humanity stewardship over the earth (…The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it…Genesis 2:15), he did so with the intent that we would tend to it with loving care, reflecting his care for us. God did not put us over the rest of creation with the understanding that we would abuse it by greed or ignorance. Environmental health ought to be the concern of every person, particularly believers and particularly those in the United States where we use so much of the world’s resources. And that means less trash and better management of the trash that must be…