Lucia, 86, single-handedly cleans a beach in Ischia that has been transformed into a landfill.

La beach of St. Francis, to Forio, is one of the most beautiful of theisland of IschiaBut especially in winter, when the beach resorts are closed, it turns into an open-air landfill.

On the sand of this earthly paradise you can find everything: plastic bottles, scraps of paper and cardboard, cotton swabs, food scraps. And certainly, in this case, the blame cannot be placed on local administrators and the usual incompetent and incompetent councilor. Here, the filth, absurdly turning a beach into a dunghill, is created by the citizens themselves. Indifferent to the degradation of their main source of wealth, the Beauty of these places.

To break down the wall of this complicity that mixes incivility and indifference, he thinks a 86-year-old woman, Lucia Di Bartolomei. Silently, without making too much publicity, without going hunting for the usual environmentalist association that wants to put a cap on her civic sense, she, when the days allow it, covers herself and transforms herself into the beach sweeper of San Francesco. Wearing a gray coat and hat, he wanders meter after meter, collecting all the debris. He does it with extreme simplicity, and with a single comment: "I hope that others will come after me to clean this beach. We must start with small gestures, if we really want to change things..." Yes, small gestures, but as we repeat on our website, of great value, like other stories of citizens, almost always women, who like Lucia personally take action to clean beaches and gardens.