It’s been a long time since the Eternal City of Rome has been dealing with the garbage crisis. The current situation is that the historical city lays in puddles of trash as the dumping site of the city has been closed for maintenance.
The overflowing, gaping dustbins and the decades of negligence have worsened the situation. The tourists and residents can literally smell the problem affecting the city. Garbage litters the ancient streets, with tons of rubbish lying around unattended, flies dining on the rotten foods and the seagulls enjoying the rotting treats.
Streets of Rome are littered with garbage as the dumping site remains closed for maintenance / Image: The Jakarta Post
Amidst all this chaos and crisis, Italy’s capital is offering free tickets to the travelers on its public transport system, in exchange for their waste plastic bottles. Rome is trying to rectify the situation of littering trash by proposing free metro tickets to travelers who re-cycle plastic bottles using machines set up in three of its stations.
Currently, the machine processes 20,000 bottles a day. The passengers need to download an app on their mobile phones which registers the number of tickets they have earned depending on the number of bottles they have fed to the recycling machines.
A single ticket that is valid for 100 minutes of travel, costs 30 bottles that must be put into the machine with the barcode label so that the machine can read them and register them on the app. The metro turnstiles can read the app on mobile phones, therefore the travelers participating in the initiative do not need to buy a regular ticket.
Put the plastic bottle(s) in the machine to get free Metro tickets / Image: Sky News
This initiative was launched in July and since then 350,000 bottles have been recycled. The authorities plan to extend it across the metro network and run it until July 2020.
Although the city authorities have been dealing with plastic waste properly, the trash rotting in the streets, on the roads and often in front of historical monuments is creating chaos. The foul smell and rodents infiltrating the residences pose a serious threat to the health of the people.
Foul smell and rodents infiltrating residences pose a serious threat to the health of people / Image: The Guardian
It has been so long that the residents may have forgotten the original, beautiful state of this remarkable city of the great artists. The political leaders are busy accusing each other as the garbage problem exacerbates. Hopefully, the Romans will find a solution to this crisis soon or the city will soon turn into a garbage dump.
Via: Reuters