My husband and I with our local MP at our local park, Clean Up Australia Day 2014
Fower #115 suggested to Participate in Clean Up Australia Day. That was today, 2 March 2014, and my husband and I, plus our daughter and her boyfriend, joined several others to clean up a local park. The park would be about two acres in size and we spent an hour and a half picking up lots of different things such as:
lolly (candy) wrappers, beer bottles and broken glass, pieces of plastic, lots and lots of cigarette buts, underwear, a backpack, a car tyre, a burst balloon on a string.
What struck me most was the amount of deteriorated plastic, but the issue is that it doesn't compost into the ground, it breaks into smaller and smaller parts, therefore the same total quantity is there, just in many, many pieces. It was like trying to pick up a piece of peeled paint - it fell apart in your hand, which made it difficult to collect in it's entirety. These pieces of plastic easily find their way into our water systems where they are then ingested by fish, and then we eat the fish - so it comes back to us in the end.
The amount of broken glass (smashed beer bottles) was quite astounding and very difficult to gather as a lot of it was broken into rather tiny pieces.
We also saw dumped garden waste. People who live nearby must weed their garden and take this rubbish down to the park to dump it instead of dealing with it themselves. That's rather disgusting.
I really don't know why we don't look to other countries to learn from those that do things really well. Switzerland is a magnificent country, extremely tidy without a piece of rubbish anywhere. How do they do it? Is it a conscious action on their part, or are they just better people - people with a greater respect for themselves and where they live?
1 comment:
When Joshua was in the Scouts we always participated (as a family, not just Josh & his troop) in Clean Up Australia Day. It's amazing (and sad) to see the things we would pull out of a local wetlands park, including shopping trolleys, gumboots, and as you said, plenty of broken glass and tossed away paper/plastic - LOTS of takeaway packaging. The Scouts would put on a BBQ and softdrinks afterwards - and in South Australia, many of our soft-drink & alcohol cans and bottles are returnable for 10c per item. As we "cleaned up", we were also sorting into multiple bags - plastic, paper, other recyclables and returnables. Always ended the day tired but feeling like it was a JOB WELL DONE.
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