The Trash of Madrid - Max Gaddis

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/14/blame-madrid-rubbish-mayor-botilla

Madrid's street cleaner strike has left the city in piles of rubbish. The mayor, Ana Botella, has been blamed for the bad smells and unsightly trash hanging around Spain's capital. On November 5th, street cleaners walked out over plans for layoffs. Since then, the city has gotten increasingly more dirty, smelly, and disgusting. Tourism has dropped in the city and businesses are losing money and customers because they are unfortunate enough to be near or have a large pile of uncollected trash near them. Residents and locals can't even go outside on their own patios for fear of the smell and sight. Not all trash has been left out because not all workers are on strike, but the little that is being collected does the city no difference. Mayor Botella has been deemed incapable of running the city because of this strike. This Wednesday, she finally acknowledged the strike and declared than the workers had 48 hours to come up with something, or she would bring in a public-sector company to do what needed to be done. Public employees have no intentions of doing what Botella tells them to.

I think they need to just recycle and wash stuff and not be worried about trash. The first image that popped into my mind when I read this story was a Wall-E type situation.

 

This shows how much this city consumes and, to be honest, it's saddening. This is effecting their economy, politics, and social relations with other countries, and real soon, it will be affecting their geography, which is the fourth PEGS needed to deplete the city's resources and delete it from the face of the Earth. They need to come up with a solution to this before we end up not being able to stand up on our own two feet.