What do politicians, musicians, club owners, shopkeepers, and numerous other entrepreneurs have in common?

They all use the public streets of the Gouves Township as their own private outlet for illegally promoting their products or services.

And what makes this deluge of litter even more striking is the fact that it is outlawed in all nearby areas, like N. Alikarnassos, Hersonissos and Ierapetra

"The problem of 'poster pollution' had been plaguing our city," said Manolis Mastorakis, mayor of Ierapetra.  "We passed a municipal regulation on Appearance and Cleanness, and are installing 100 tasteful metal announcement stands, as well as three-columned special stands to accommodate only the announcements of funerals and memorials."

Gouves' immediate neighbour, Hersonissos, passed a law on poster pollution three years ago.

"We appointed five specific sites with the appropriate spaces for postings, none of which are on the main road running through the centre of town," explained Hersonissos Mayor Yiorgos Danelakis. "Also, the municipal police force monitors the illegal posters and fines are imposed by the financial department of the municipality. And the street cleaners have a standing order to take down all posters that have been posted illegally."

Why is the poster pollution problem being solved in other areas, and not in the Gouves Township?

"The problems of erecting announcement stands in our Demos is that there are certain safety standards specified by the law, such as they must be a certain distance from the road," said Gouves Mayor Yiorgos Nikolakakis. "Since the national roads, old and new, are continually crisscrossing our Demos, all of our central venues where people like to post are touched by the national roads where posting stands must be from 30 to 50 metres from the road. Because of this you must put them on private properties so you have to negotiate with property owners."

The mayor explained that there are some posting boxes in the square in Gouves, and in Elia by the old community building, but apparently no one wants to post there.

"We have had some initial discussions on whether we could place tableaux in some main locations," he added, "but as far as posting without our permission on township property, like on municipal walls and poles, we punish with fines. This year so far we have issued about 8,000 euros in fines."

Gouves Municipal Police Chief Kostas Martimianakis said his department is aggressively pursuing the pollution culprits. 

"Now that we are a force of six, we can get around and get the evidence on the offenders," he said. "And soon now we will get our own vehicle with the 'cherry' on top and we can cruise around in the evenings and catch them in the act."

He explained that most people that put up posters sneak around at night, since they know that they are lawbreakers.

"Everyone likes to put notices/posters up in Kokkini on the main road, preferably by Hatzis," Mayor Nikolakakis said. "There is no municipal land around so I would have to negotiate with Hatzis to put up a tableau inside his parking lot. Perhaps in Gouves we could have some spaces by the tap where there are some empty lots. As far as the funereal notices, we could have appropriate spaces in front of churches."

Although the mayor outlined some possibilities with dealing with the problem, he wasn't holding out too much optimism. And, posting funeral notices is a separate problem.

"People prefer to put notices up around kafenions because those are gathering places," he said. "And, of course, they put them up by the hundreds like if someone passes in Kokkini they will post it throughout the demos probably even Elia. I personally feel that people will not respect a municipal ordinance, especially if we cannot provide some very prominent areas for posting."