One of the indicators of an economy in decline is a fall in the amount of rubbish generated, which is the case in Motril.
The town now generates 30 tonnes of organic refuse less a month and all sorts of ‘unofficial’ rubbish collecting is taking place.
But there is another side to it; take the old plastic covering from the area's greenhouses. It used to be an environmental plague, with piles of tattered plastic adorning tracks and gullies. Nowadays, however, you will have a hard time finding any laying about.
This is not because the municipal services have moved into overdrive and are recycling it, but because:
a) greenhouses farmers haven’t got the money to replace it, so they patch it up instead of throwing it out, and
b) industriously minded persons have found that they can make a few much needed euros from collecting it up and selling it back to farmers who are on the look out for better pieces of plastic than the tatters they have left.
Do your own calculations: the kind of plastic needed for the greenhouses costs around 70 centimes a square metre.
If a farmer has a hectare (10,000 sq/m) of greenhousing, he is looking at 7,000 euros to change the plastic covering – which is not exactly peanuts, especially when you take into account that the big distributors are squeezing the farmers into accepting less and less for their produce, whilst at the same time the overhead costs are rising.
The official company hired for the collection and disposal of this kind of plastic complains that their workload has decreased by 50% compared to 2008/09.
But it is not only plastic, of course, people are simply not throwing out old furniture and household appliances like before.
Rubbish is no longer rubbish, but an income-generating resource.
