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Mallorca's person of the week: Motorhomes, camper vans & the coastal cleaning service

Last week in the Majorca Daily Bulletin

Lionel Messi | - EFE

| Palma |

... was arguably the greatest footballer of all time, so when a GOAT (open to debate) like Lionel Messi one day weeps in Barcelona and almost the very next day smiles in Paris, the world stops and takes keen note. The world was also keen to know how such a thing could have happened. Messi leaving Barcelona? And so there was all the stuff about financial fair play, the debt and so on. Meanwhile, the Messi mess at Barça would have been greeted with horror by souvenir shops in Majorca’s resorts, which hopefully had shirts on sale or return and would have been desperate for Messi PSG stock.

Three cheers...

For, the proposal to use part of a municipal park in Palma for motorhomes and camper vans. Close to the sea, the Son Perera park is close to El Molinar, one of the parts of the city affected by motorhomes being parked on the streets. The proposal didn’t come from the town hall, which may or may not now consider it. But there is little doubt that solutions need to be found (and not only in Palma).

Son Perera could be one, but what hoops would have to be gone through for approval? City planning regulations, land classification usage, environmental impact ... even if it were a goer, it could take ages.

A big boo....

For all the rubbish that ends up in the sea. The Balearic government’s Abaqua agency spends around one million euros a year on the contracts for the coastal cleaning service. In return for this, tonnes of waste are collected. In June and July alone there were almost twenty tonnes. Since the service started in 2004, well over 700 tonnes of waste have been picked up, around 60% having been plastic.

Some of the waste is natural - vegetation will get washed into the sea - but most of it is not. The amount of plastic is a disgrace, but at least the percentage in June and July was down - some 46% of all the waste was plastic.

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