ATHENS (AFP) – A steady stream of EU fines and two decades of trying have failed to get recycling off the ground in Greece, where eco-awareness is only half-heartedly promoted by authorities. According the European environment agency, only 16 percent of household waste is recycled across the country, compared to a 50-percent target by 2020 under EU directives. In contrast, the European recycling average is 28 percent, with Slovenia leading at 49 percent and Latvia bringing up the rear at 3 percent. In Athens, with nearly four million inhabitants out of the country’s 11 million, only 13 percent of eligible waste is recycled, town hall figures show. “We don’t have a clear strategy and then we don’t have a political will to materialise this strategy,” notes Dimitris Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Greek branch of Greenpeace. Around many parts of the country, and especially in the countryside, garbage is still scattered piecemeal in makeshift dumps — one of them on a hillside on Andros island actually collapsed under the strain in 2011, burying a beach below in the process. In 2014, Greece still had some 70 dumps, most of them tolerated if not actively run by municipal authorities. In June 2014, nearly