Welcome to Athens. City of smoke and noise and streets lined with orange trees. Happy home to a thousand stray cats. Many people find this a chaotic place. Money is short, rents are high and the city strains from the influx of migrants and refugees.
I find Athens the opposite – a strong and loving city. United in struggle people form communities and projects to help each other survive. Where Athens first appeared as chaotic, I now see it as compassionate, socially generous and humanely organised. I began engaging with these communities shortly after I arrived, I was moved; I took their combined ethos of sustainability and put it into practice in my own life.
I volunteered at KHORA, a kitchen and safe community space in the heart of Athens. KHORA aims to reduce hunger and poverty in the local area while ensuring the health of its community. The first three UN Sustainable Development Goals: ending poverty and hunger and promoting wellbeing are all dressed by the KHORA ethos. I spent my time serving and cleaning, meaning I could chat with the guests and feel for myself the strength of the community created (https://khoracollective.org/about).
A like-minded community space is Yoga and Sport with Refugees, a small gym that provides a free training space and weekly classes from gymnastics to self-defence. YSR recruits refugees to teach classes, drawing them into a community and enabling their skills to educate others. I engage with and support the gym on a weekly basis, which along with the work of their volunteers is how they stay open. YSR seeks to empower and unite everyone through sport particularly its female members. By running women only classes, the gym motivates women and girls addressing the fifth SDG, combatting gender equality (https://yogasportwithrefugees.org).
My daily sustainability revolves around consumption. I avoid big chains and shop at the local food market consisting entirely of local producers. Supporting Greece based business boosts the local community and reduces importation. For clothes and household items I visit Skoros, an exchange based anti-consumerism project in my neighbourhood of Exarcheia. Skoros promotes sustainable consumption and in line with the 11th SDG supports its local community in becoming more resilient (https://skoroscc.espivblogs.net/en/ντοκιμαντέρ/).
Tourism has an increasingly harmful effect on the environment particularly for the rich and sensitive island network of Greece. While aware of this I have still been keen to travel so I have focused on making fewer trips and travelled with companies like Blue Star and Superfast Ferries. Both are part of the environmental protection organisation HELMEPA.
According to Yıldırım et al, around 72% of CO2 emissions from tourism come from transport (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211973623000466 ). Companies like Bluestar focus on reducing this by preventing water pollution and Superfast Ferries by reducing air pollution. Superfast also practice sustainability on board like filtering sea water into drinking water and repurposing engine heat for central heating. (https://www.greeka.com/travel-services/greek-ferries/environmental-policies/). Back in Athens I mostly get around by foot or if commuting further, I make use of public transport.
