This is what founder of “United Armenia” initiative Arshak Zakaryan says, mentioning that Armenians throw leftovers into the river or leave them in the area after throwing a party. Of course, tourists aren’t pleased to see that during their visits to Armenia.

“Armenia’s historical monuments are polluted as much as there are visitors, meaning the more the visitors, the more polluted the area is,” says monument expert Samvel Karapetyan, adding: “Seeing the pollution, tourists are amazed and get disappointed. They see that there is no relationship between the people who created the monuments and the people preserving them. It’s as if we have occupied a temporary area, but even in such cases people must make sure they don’t leave any traces.”

Rector of the Armenian Institute of Tourism Robert Minasyan believes Armenia is truly designed for tourism. “When a person comes to our house, we prepare in advance and make the house tidy. That’s how we should treat our country as well. Our government has declared tourism as a primary direction, but it doesn’t stop there. We have to start with ourselves, and first and foremost, with the youth since they tour more and recognize the monuments.”

Minasyan proposes to declare a contest between the regions to see which of them is the cleanest and which region tourists wish to visit more.

Arshak Zakaryan has been working with tourists for many years now and accompanies them to historical and cultural sites in Armenia, but he always feels ashamed of the tourists’ attitude when they see how much garbage there is.

“I was accompanying a Chinese girl to Havuts Tar, and she gathered a pile of garbage on the way there. When we reached Garni and wanted to throw the garbage, we couldn’t find a garbage can and had to bring it with us to Yerevan. The Chinese clean our garbage for us. Until now, Havuts Tar was the cleanest site, but recently a road and eating places have been constructed here, and the people throw the garbage in the well nearby,” says Arshak.

In his turn, Arshak Zakaryan proposes to control all historical monuments with at least one guard at each site. For instance, the entrance to Garni is free and the area is clean. Nevertheless, even though it wasn’t that easy to teach Armenians to throw garbage into the garbage cans, Arshak has noticed that the locals are involved with cleaning the area.

Tsovinar Karapetyan