Conditioning
No I’m not talking about hair, but
this is ‘worth it’, thinking about, I mean. Yesterday I took a leaf out of
womble Wendy’s book and took my litter picker and bin bags off round my local
paths in Lake/Sandown, I had to pick my morning carefully, the day the men come
to collect the bins, not wanting to have to take all the rubbish back home with
me. This route to Los Altos park, and Sandown town avoids most traffic and is a
pleasant, well used route, but for the litter. During walks along this stretch you can observe
seasonal changes, especially at ground level:- the wild flowers, violets and
shiny yellow celandines in spring, grannies bonnets (wild aquilegia), the
whispering, delicate heads of quaking grass in summer, and always the cheery
gorse with its candles of yellow, and delicious scent, attracting a busy buzz
of bees. Sad then to find this area
devastated by indiscriminate use of weed killer, in particular this year. Normally
such a robust shrub as the gorse would recover from this, but following the
spraying in Spring, still hasn’t recovered, which leads me to believe it was a
particularly pernicious type of weed killer, perhaps one that the public shouldn’t
have been exposed to
Contacting the local rail service, and its community
representative Bobby Lock, has led nowhere, with no response to my emails,
perhaps they don’t care about the wildlife. Yet it was only a while ago that
‘biodiversity’ was the ‘buzz’ word. Without brambles, gorse and other nectar
rich, wild larders, insects, birds, and other small creatures struggle. The
mining bees whose hum greets you as you pass along the banks of trees through
Los Altos will have to search other areas for pollen, taking them further afield,
expending more energy.
The litter has continued unabated, which is mainly beer
cans, and plastic bottles – losing count after the first 100 or so bagged up
yesterday. This type of litter would rarely have been seen in the 50s and 60s,
it would have been glass bottles instead, which, when I was a child I took to our local
shop to get a few pennies back on. Will the drinks and packaging industry take
some responsibility and put some of their profits into addressing this growing
problem. Beach cleans have bought up the problem of lack of litter bins, and to
some it doesn’t matter if there is one in front of their nose, they would
rather throw rubbish on the ground, but having litter bins around would still be an
improvement to the problem. Dog waste bins on the other hand I’m pleased to say
are plentiful. On the particular stretch I was clearing there are at least four
excellent! – yet why no litter bins. Has a type of conditioning set in, a
mindset where we walk past certain things like litter and accept it - that’s
just how it is. Young children passed me on their way to school, they asked
their mum’s and dad’s what I was doing, and why was I picking up rubbish. They
didn’t know. So this is why, because for me it’s about cherishing where I live,
cherishing the environment we all share with the wild things, and seeing the
area a little cleaner makes me feel better. So come on Councillors help us all
keep our environment clean and tidy, let’s have some litter bins please, and
Bobby Lock (community rail partnership) please look at giving nature a helping
hand, not a knock back.
