The blue flag system

It has been a few days since I last was here to write my carefully chosen words full of spelling mistakes for you. Today I found a little about the beaches in Crete and if they were certified to be a blue flag or not. It's the organisation FEE thas is responsible for this certification. FEE is an organisation that's "aiming to promote sustainable development through environmental education". One of the things they are responsible for is to certifie beaches along the world via the blue flag. The blue flag certification is a eco-label that beaches or marinas can apply for. It's spreading more and more out around the world and now the blue flag certification can be found in Europe, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada and the Caribbean . As you can see large parts of the world are still not taking part of the blue flag system, but as the system gets more and more known I'm sure it will grow. So far there are just three beaches in Norway that has been found good enough to get a blue flag.

What are the Criteria to become a "blue flag"-beach? There are many many of them, so I will just pick a few to display here;
- Information about "blue flag", and a list of the criteria to get the blue flag
- Information about the water quality, and also fulfill the criteria made for this.
- Having enviromental activities, like  improve the consciousness of visitors and residents in the area about the
   local enviroment.
- Enviromental information; about the ecosystem in the neighbourhood, and information about protected or
   vulnerable nature areas in nearby sorroundings. It also includes information about protected or vulnerable birds, reptiles, fishes, plants and other living creatures.
- A map of the area, displaying toilets, protected areas, phones, water quality measurement areas, parking,
  "you are here"-marking and a lot of other things.
- Rules for the area, like opening-hours, driving, camping and animals.

In Crete, or to be more spesific, in our area along the coast of Platanias, the main beaches that we survey are all included in the blue flag system, both the Platanias, the Gerani and the Maleme beach.

I can't help wondering, do they really deserve the blue flag? When I think about the information that I have seen along those beaches, much information has been lacking or not present at all. Ok. I didn't go along the beaches looking for it, so maybe I'm to quick to judge. And maybe I need to go along the beaches this year to search for all the things they need to fulfill to be a part of the blue flag system.

The greeks have a term; fakelaki. This means " little envelope". It's a common way of bribery troughout the whole country. Could it be that it also could happen when it comes to the "blue flag"-certification, only with bigger envelopes?. I hope my suspiscion will be proven wrong.