This island gets 2.3m tourists/year and is sick of trash they leave behind

NEW YORK: Luigi Esposito, whose ancestors have lived on Capri since 1810, objects when he hears people describe the island as “the most beautiful place in the world.”

Esposito is among many who say the island’s famous beauty is under serious threat by those two endemic Italian scourges: tourists and trash. The tiny island, just over 4sq miles, is host to 2.3 million tourists a year, and not all of them take out what they bring in.

So Capri is fighting back. The mayor, Giovanni De Martino, approved an order that as of May 1, all forms of single-use plastic will be banned from the Capri municipality. The ban includes bags and water bottles carried over by tourists, and provides for a fine of €500 (about $560).

For some, the new ban on plastics does not go far enough. A local group, Capriamoci, has sprung up to lobby for restrictions on the boats that bring all the tourists — except those rich enough to arrive by private helicopter.

“We cannot turn back the clock, but we cannot take any more visitors than we have now,” the mayor said.

Capri’s original tourists were the Romans, who rowed over, built a reputed dozen imperial palaces and filled all the best grottoes with statuary and mosaics.

Capri is known for its many dramatic rock formations three famous stacks that rise from the sea, nearly a mile from the marina. Nearly every house has a view, and they have all been protected from development for half a centurye.

Mayor De Martino estimated that 85% of visitors are day trippers — some 20,000 a day in the summer — who arrive on the morning ferries and depart before dinnertime, leaving little money behind but plenty of trash. Capriotes refer to them as the “mordi e fuggi” crowd, literally “bite and flee”. “This is a very fast food version of tourism,” said painter Antonio Palombo.

Bonnie Brown and her husband from Iowa City said their total expenditure on the island were a baseball cap, a lemon gelato and some candy. “I understand how they feel,” she said. “But if you live by tourism, you die by it.”