Locals in Kas start cleansing campaign

But as with everything shiny, there is a shadowy side and Kaş is no exception. Its shadowy side concerns pollution and solid waste ashore and at sea.

Aware of this bitter truth, a handful of Kaş lovers met a few weeks ago with a common, summed up by one participant: “If you clean somewhere yourself, you don’t allow it to be polluted, therefore we should activate all concerned parties in Kaş to clean and save the environment.”  �

All agreed and dared to start the “ There is No Other Kaş in the Mediterranean” campaign with no budget and no sponsors. Afterward, the developments were amazing. It was as if everybody was waiting for such a call. All NGOs, individual volunteers including foreigners living in Kaş and official organizations have done their part.

The first step of the campaign, “Environmental Information and Raising Awareness,” started with seminars for students in and around Kaş. The feedback was unexpected and amazed and motivated the campaigners. They were carried away by the poems and essays written by the children reflecting their environmental sensibilities. The children’s work will be published in a book under the same title of the campaign.

People working on small fishing boats, daily boat tours and diving boats were the campaign’s main target group because they are sometimes unjustly blamed for being responsible for the kind of pollution the campaign is fighting against. After attending seminars on the subject, they have enthusiastically adopted the purpose. For example, the fishermen, using their initiative, gathered a group of foreigners and sailed to small islands and popular bays to collect garbage and bring it to the harbor.

The last seminar was from Atilla Uras, a university lecturer on the environment and an incurable Kaş lover, to a mixed group of people from NGOs, students and official organizations related to tourism and trade.

After the last seminar, people gathered to watch the cleaning of the bottom of Kaş Harbor. The Kaymakam, chief of police and the commander of Coast Guard Boat 113 initiated the main part of the campaign by diving together followed by another 33 divers, including two English men.

In minutes, some odd things came out from various parts of the harbor, such as lids for pots and pans, plastic bottles, tires, even a metal garbage trolley, shoes, bottles and more. Meanwhile, the students collected the garbage on the ground. A team of fishermen and environmental activists worked on the pipes of solid waste to classify and register the output of the day.

Over the following two days, boy and girl scouts will collect garbage from the famous pebble beaches like Küçükçakıl and Büyükçakıl, while divers collect refuse from underwater.