Residents in the Therissos area did not need festive decorations this Christmas. They got something else instead: overflowing recycling bins, stacked so high they became the neighbourhood’s most visible seasonal installation.
We are not talking about official city décor, of course. This was the unplanned kind — captured by the lens of Creta24 on Christmas Day — where recycling bins spilled into the street, becoming makeshift monuments to municipal neglect.
Plastic bags, cardboard boxes, and, for reasons unknown, carpets formed a small mountain of waste along a residential road in Therissos. The scene was not unique. Similar images were reported across other parts of the city, with residents noting that cleanliness did not improve even during the holidays, when waste volumes are predictably higher.
By now, full bins have become a familiar sight in Heraklion. That familiarity, however, does not make them acceptable. If anything, it raises a more uncomfortable question: if Christmas Day begins with bins already overflowing, how will the city plan to cope with the inevitable post-holiday surge in waste?
Especially when the municipal cleaning service is already understaffed and stretched thin, the situation looks less like an exception and more like a preview.
Holidays are not an unexpected event. Neither is increased waste. What is surprising is how consistently the city appears surprised by both.
At some point, overflowing bins stop being a seasonal inconvenience and start becoming a statement — about planning, priorities, and how low the bar has been set for what counts as “functioning” public services.
Christmas came wrapped in cardboard this year. And no one was around to pick it up.
