Corfu is worth
the effort.
One of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean, and keeping it that way is smaller work than it sounds. It starts twenty metres from your own front door.
Our mission
We care at home. And the care doesn't stop at the door.
Floors swept, courtyard tidy, the step washed down in the morning. Nobody has to be told — it is already who we are.
So we take it twenty metres further. The pavement in front of your door. The wall you park against. The verge at the end of your street. That is where it starts, not where it stops.
A street is the one room we all share, and it is looked after the same way a home is — by the people in it. That goes for everything standing in it: the bench, the step, the wall, the bin. Almost none of it is new — it has lasted because people were careful with it, not because it was built to.
Someone looked after Corfu before us. We would like to do the same, and hand it on better than we found it.
What one person can do
All of it is small.
Nothing here takes longer than a few minutes, and none of it needs anyone's permission.
Take the twenty metres
The pavement in front of your door, and a bit either side, is the one piece of Corfu you can be certain about.
What that meansPick up one that isn't yours
One piece on the way to the car. Nobody has to see you do it, and the corner looks different either way.
Carry a bag on the walk
If the dog comes out with you, the bag does too. Ten seconds, and the pavement stays clear for the next person.
Keep a bag in the car
Beach days and drives into the hills end with something to throw away. A bag in the boot brings it home with you.
What goes where
Nothing has to end up on the ground.
The four by the kerb take what comes out of your house. The ones on the pavement are for what is in your hand. Two more take things that should never go in a bin at all.
The four by the kerb
Everyday rubbish. Tie the bag shut — an untied bag is an open bag the moment an animal finds it.
Paper, plastic, metal, cartons. Rinse the food off and flatten the boxes — an unflattened box is mostly air.
Glass bottles and jars only. The rounded one with the flap on top, marked ΓΥΑΛΙΝΩΝ ΣΥΣΚΕΥΑΣΙΩΝ.
Food and garden waste. Peelings, leftovers and cuttings. Not every street on the island has one yet.
On the pavement
The street bin, for what is in your hand. A cup, a wrapper, a bottle — never a household bag, which fills it in one go.
Two iron baskets on a post. The old-town version, a green bag folded over each rim. They fill fast in summer.
A steel column in the pavement, with the bin itself underground. The label on the rim says which stream.
Their own container
Clothes and shoes in closed bags. Also bags, hangers, blankets and towels. No rubbish, glass or metal.
Used frying oil in a sealed plastic bottle, never down the sink. Not glass, and never engine oil.
In no bin at all
Everything else has its own place. Batteries and small electronics go in the boxes inside supermarkets — and a disposable vape is both, with a lithium cell sealed inside it. Dropped in a bin it gets crushed in the truck, and that is how collection vehicles catch fire. Medicines go back to any pharmacy.
A cigarette end is plastic, not paper. The filter is cellulose acetate and it is still there years later. A street drain is a short pipe to the sea, so the kerb is the worst place to flick one — a street bin or a pocket ashtray and it is done.
Furniture, mattresses and appliances are collected on request — one phone call to the municipality — or you can take them yourself to the Green Point at Tria Gefyria. A tied bag of dog waste goes in the green bin or any street bin, not the brown one, which takes food and garden waste only.
Bulky collection — 26610 24444The things we share
Everything in the street belongs to all of us.
The walls, the bus stops, the playgrounds, the benches, the signs, the lamps, the bins. No one of us owns them, which is exactly why they are everyone's — paid for together, used by everyone, and standing there on trust.
So we do not break them, and we do not paint on them. A tagged shutter, a smashed shelter, a bench pulled apart: the cost lands on all of us, and the person who meets it first is usually a child, an older neighbour, or someone visiting who will tell the story when they get home.
Almost nothing here is new. Almost none of it could be replaced in the same stone by the same hands. Looking after it is not a rule anybody enforces — it is just what people who live somewhere do.
The one habit
Carry it to the next bin.
It takes twenty seconds.
If the one by you is full, the next one is rarely far. Carry it that bit further, and the corner you walk past every day stays the way you would want to find it. That is most of the work, right there.
What it adds up to
You can feel the difference
on the walk home.
A street that is looked after feels different to walk down, and people treat it differently. Corfu does not need everyone — it needs enough of us, and it starts twenty metres from your own front door.