French Towns Move Away From Trucks And Back To Horse Carts

More than 60 French towns have struck on a cheaper and greener way to collect household waste –

60 French towns that have struck upon a cheaper and greener way to collect household waste – ditching the dustbin lorry in favour of a horse and cart.Long before recycling became a household word, a Paris prefect called Eugene Poubelle, introduced three separate containers for household waste – glass and pottery, oyster and mussel shells, and the rest – and had horse-drawn carts empty them. Six years later, his surname entered the Academy dictionary as the word for “dustbin”. Now, over a century later, a growing number of French towns are returning to horse-drawn kerbside waste collection, as a better way to recycle …

“By using the horse for garden waste collection, we have raised awareness. People are composting more. Incineration used to cost us E107 a tonne, ridiculous for burning wet matter, now we only pay E37 to collect and compost the waste,” says Mayor Jean-Pierre Enjalbert of Saint Prix, in Greater Paris …

In Sicily, another place bringing back four-hoofed transport, Mario Cicero, mayor of 14th-century town Castelbuono … pioneered glass and cardboard collection using two packsaddle donkeys in 2007. Three years on, Cicero has done his sums and calculated a cost saving of 34%, as well as winning over a sceptical population and putting more donkeys to work.

“Compared with E5,000-7,000 annual running costs for a diesel truck, an ass costs E1,000-1,500 and can live 25-30 years. A truck costs around E25,000, lasts around five years and can’t reproduce,” says Cicero, whose four asinelli have now produced 25 offspring, so he won’t even be buying any more.

De-evolution at its finest!

Wow!

The Vatican has made available a magnificent image of the Sistine Chapel.  The image is huge and takes a while to load, but it worth every moment.   Fly around the glorious space, zoom in and out on any part.  This site alone would make the Internet worth while.

Venice Becoming A Ghost Of Itself

That most marvelous of European cities, Venice, is in danger of becoming little more than a post-modern simulacrum of its flamboyant past;  a flat-screen tourist resort instead of a vibrant living city.  The city’s population is now only around 60,000.  As the AP reports:

A dozen gondolas snaked down the Grand Canal on Saturday in a mock funeral procession bemoaning Venice’s approach to the dreaded status of living museum, with a population now below 60,000.  While the largely symbolic threshold is considered by some to signal the end of the city’s viability, Venetian officials say reports of Venice’s demise are premature, and even Saturday’s somber funeral ended with a surprise, bright hope for rebirth.  In fact, while native Venetians have been fleeing the expensive lagoon city for cheaper and easier living on the mainland, the population of the historic center was officially 60,025 as of Thursday, up from the 59,992 it had fallen to in recent weeks. ”They will have the funeral in a living village, not yet dead. And it won’t die, even if it goes to 59,999,” Mara Rumiz, the city official in charge of demographics, said in a telephone interview Friday. She said the numbers don’t take into account the inhabitants of Venice’s islands — including glassmaking Murano and the Lido beach — nor the many who are not officially registered, including students. Together, they add another 120,000 souls.

That’s all well and good, but a core of 60,000 is certainly not enough to keep the city as a going concern, with necessary services for its residents.  And living in Venice is not easy:

[L]ife in Venice is for the hardy and financially resilient. Housing costs and rents drop to as much as a third in the nearby city of Marghera. And consider the logistics of an everyday errand like grocery shopping. One would likely need a water taxi ride to a supermarket, another to get home with the groceries, and then with few elevators in residential buildings, there is a heavy load to lug upstairs. Historic Venice does not permit the comfort of a car parked outside the door … Venetians themselves would like to see more money put toward retaining natives, and are critical of such projects as the new Calatrava Bridge over the Grand Canal. Building the bridge, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, ran well over projected costs while doing little to ease the lives of average Venetians.

There is, I think, little anyone outside the city can do to help.  Visiting the city more would simply add to the tourist side of the ledger and add to the pressures on the locals.  This is all very sad and difficult to watch.

Back From Travel

Just back from almost a month in Europe.   We cruised from Spain to Italy and France, before driving around England (and a bit of Wales).  I’ll have more to say about all that in the next few days.

I’ll also be posting some of the images I collected during the trip — the first ten or so can already be found at http://www.pbase.com/jak_king/europe_2009.

As we sailed into Naples early one morning, we were offered this gift of sunrise at Mount Vesuvius: