Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Mt. Vesuvius at night


Mt. Vesuvius at night, originally uploaded by southiejason.

Being that garbage has been a theme at Platinum Elite, I found it interesting to spot this news story on MSNBC.com about a Trash Crisis in Naples, Italy and the surrounding area.

I can attest to the garbage pile issues in that region of Italy. In late September, we drove from Pompeii to Castellammare di Stabia, which was directly across from Mount Vesuvius, the monster volcano in this photo.

We decided to take an alternate route through some of the local cities during the drive.

Good thing it was daylight. Well, good and bad.

Good because we felt safer navigating a sketchier part of Italy that wasn't exactly a tourist haven.

Bad because we drove past mountains and mountains of garbage - trash piles like I had never seen before on city streets.

And they were endless. Not some rogue neighbor who put all of his refuse out a day late. This had to have been weeks of garbage just lying there, festering. It was quite the scene (which I neglected to photograph - this pic is from the MSNBC story).

Imagine seeing scenes like this everywhere. Southern Italy seems to have trash issues quite often.

Quite different from the rolling hills of Tuscany we had seen just days prior!

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