If local residents in Mallorca, and I presume it applies everywhere, don’t care about their immediate environment, how are they expected to have an interest in the welfare of areas outside of their neighbourhood? On the one hand, Mallorca is facing a summer of more protests against the impact of mass tourism and poor political policies to ease the negative fallout, while on the other, there are local residents who are trashing the streets they live in and their own beaches.
I live in the very centre of Palma where Tuesday evening is when Emaya comes round to collect large household waste, but most people put it out the morning after, so it remains there for most of the week. Lovely. But what continues to shock me more is that key beaches, such as Illetas, are still covered in cigarette butts.
In fact, last Saturday afternoon I was forced to ask a young local lady to kindly remove the butt I had just watch her flick into the sea which, I have to admit, is already quite polluted with plastic and the season’s just beginning. Left to me I would ban smoking on all beaches, but that would have to be policed and if a certain section of the local population doesn’t care perhaps the attention should focused at home first before attacking those from abroad.