Forum Topic

Robin Knight · 04/26/2021 09:59:00

new.ChiswickW4.com Communtity Forum Topic posting

Litter picking

Here's a story to give hope...For years I've collected litter in the area around the Hogarth roundabout. On Saturday I was walking from the High Road and picked up two cans in the underpass. As I got to the George & Devonshire exit, a small voice piped up behind me 'Thank you, thank you!' I turned round and a little girl, maybe five years old, was thanking me. She was with her father who explained that her class at school had been learning the previous week about the scourge of litter in England. I walked home with a spring in my step.

Robin Knight ● 2010d31 Comments

Robin you are amazing. The people who care make Chiswick so special. Thank you!!

Jenn Irvine ● 2010d

Great story. I have had a few people ask where to buy litter pickers from....they are about a tenner on Amazon but cheaper with a bulk buy. Happy to club together for anyone in the Grove Park vicinity who wants to get one.

Chris Vos ● 2009d

Hello! Ron Mushiso has been leading a group of volunteers to litter pick in Chiswick since January 2019. We managed a few sessions in 2020 when Covid restrictions were eased and we were allowed to do so. We meet on the last Sunday of the month for an hour. There has been a lot of coverage in local press (Chiswick Herald/Chiswick Buzz etc) and these sessions have been very well supported by adults and children. Please see just a few photos on the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/783176385889663/I also post the time/meeting point of each session on the W4 Forum and posters in the Library / Bookcase on CHR and Ron does too on social media. We look forward to your joining us when we re-commence.Thank you

Mitra Alam ● 2009d

Robin, yes I am a litter picker in my area. The Council will provide a picker and green sacks. Speak to your local Councillor. It's an endless task, very addictive and mostly thankless, and litter has a mind of its own. It returns every day. Lets face it there are many many filthy people about off loading this rubbish. Much is thrown from cars, and much is the remains of picnics which isn't taken home.Be assured I have seen it all, and some of it is pretty disgusting !

Chris Vessey ● 2009d

Litter,hate it with a passion My youngest has been out with Ron once but she is busy these days at the food bank helping out. So on that note,im going to say well done to my daughter. I know, but she deserves it during the worst of lockdown.

Julian Pavey ● 2009d

On the talking pictures channel on tv they often show a fifties short called LITTER ALERT. It shows Box Hill in Surrey after Easter bank holiday. Several tons of litter left. In those days drinks were in glass bottles. People threw the bottles down but being glass they smashed and children cut their feet on them. So this is not a new situation but one the uk has never come to terms with.

Nicholas Beard ● 2009d

Would notices on litter bins help?“ Please take your litter home for recycling.”

Rima Jones ● 2009d

Nice thought Rima very doubtful though. So long as the rubbish isn't on the perpetrators doorstep that's OK. But it isn't is it, someone else has to pick it up ! Motorists are the worst, I have seen them park outside our house, clean their cars out and leave the rubbish on pavement/road. As said before people are FILTHY ! Also just throw out rubbish as they drive along. Younger people buy their so called supper at local fast food cafe then drive to nearest quiet roadside spot, eat their food and leave waste packaging on the pavement/road. I am sure you have seen this in your area

Chris Vessey ● 2009d

Yes I have indeed and have been endlessly picking it up for years but messages on litter bins might also help. Good that the children are being educated at school.

Rima Jones ● 2009d

Rima thankyou, you say children are being educated at school. Is that not what Schools are for, education ?Do you mean the kids are being taught not to drop their litter perhaps ? Trouble is kids grow up into filthy litter dropping morons !

Chris Vessey ● 2009d

Hi Rima, with great respect it is the PARENTS responsibility to teach THEIR children NOT TO FLY TIP at any time ever. However if the parents are not clean thereisn't much hope for the children. So then maybe their school teachers can step in and teach the kids not to litter. It might work but don't hold your breath, kids imitate their parents normally. So clean parents clean kids.Dirty parents dirty kids.

Chris Vessey ● 2008d

What does a litter bin look like, there's not that many in Ealing where I live? My own experience of litter bins is that councils do not empty them often enough, hence the amount of rubbish that gets left near them to blow around. While we're on the young (and the not so young) whatever happened to the road crossing technique that their parents hopefully taught them? Most youngish people nowadays just walk out into the road without looking (usually a phone is the distraction) leaving their safety to the approaching cyclist or driver of any vehicle.

peter king ● 2008d

Peter I cannot agree more with your sentiments. A big TICK for you Sir.

Chris Vessey ● 2008d

If you’d like to join, there is a Chiswick Community Clean Up group on Facebook

Tim English ● 2008d

The contents of litter bins aren’t recycled because they are too badly contaminated with nappies, poo bags etc. So it is all incinerated which doesn’t help with Climate Change Crisis.Do the litter pickers separate recyclables for collection?

Rima Jones ● 2008d

Rima, all the litter picking I do goes into a Council green sack. I then place it outside on the pavement and report it on Fix My Street. The Council Lorry then collects it and pretty swiftly too, an excellent arrangement I must say. But I don't recycle it because fairly often full nappies are left in the gutter. Charming aren't they ? Now there are CLEAN people and there are FILTHY people !

Chris Vessey ● 2007d

Sometimes at festivals you see the collectors holding two separate bags so that they can separate presumably the valuable aluminium.

Philippa Bond ● 2007d

The stuff which I pick up if it’s recyclable eg cans, glass bottles, plastic bottles it goes in my recycling boxes for weekly collection. If it’s crisp bags, biscuit wrappers, face masks or poo bags the nearest litter bin but I don’t do the whole road!

Rima Jones ● 2007d

Just a word for unsung heroes.The pavements in TGT and CHR are swept twice daily and litter bins emptied by Hounslow Highways workers who do a meticulous job but it is all incinerated.

Rima Jones ● 2007d

But we do have an issue with bins on the commons in the summer.Most bins end up with at least as much litter next to them as they are full and it gets blown everywhere or the foxes have a good evening going through it all.Take opposite TG tube station in the summer. Many bins but they are the next morning all full and rubbish piled up next to them and litter all over the place,The reason is they get emptied around lunchtime once a day so you have say 12 noon an empty bin and that needs to serve litter all the way to 12 noon the next day.Yes, you can say people should take litter with them but that is not going to happen and you do not get people to change and do so. That is never going to be the solution so you need to do something logistically .The simple answer is for another bin or two next to each current one bin we currently have scattered around in points of the common or you empty the bins twice a day. Once in the morning and once late afternoon / evening. This way the empty bin at 12 noon is not full by 3 pm on a summer's day and needs to still serve people to 12 noon the next day.

Julian Pavey ● 2007d

Julian, do alert your local councillors to the issue and they will help to connect you with the contact who organises litter collection in our local parks. We had this issue in Homefields each summer and with some effort were able to ensure the bins were emptied much more regularly. Otherwise, as you say, the litter proliferates, the foxes have at it, and it ends up all over our beautiful parks. The answer is a more frequent collection service or more bins (as you noted).

Jenn Irvine ● 2007d

bump for M Clemente. You can try and send a personal message to Mitra Alam by clicking on purple name. Don't forget to put a something in the heading.

Philippa Bond ● 1992d

Too tired last night - I bumped the message in the wrong place!The answer though is for people to be more responsible! I think the children now are more often better than the adults and as Rima points out everything is incinerated and so valuable recyclate is lost.

Philippa Bond ● 1991d

What we found with making Green Days Green is that the local community was very keen to make this happen. People from from outside the area weren’t and just dropped whatever it was on the ground but the local children ran around picking it up and then needed to be lifted up to put in the recycling bins. 85 of them!We did have security guards there overnight but somehow someone got into a marquee and trashed the whole lot!All hands on deck for that big clear up. Phew!But we got there!

Rima Jones ● 1991d

We collected aluminium cans many years ago for charity. We learnt quickly which were aluminium and which were steel.Materials occurs several times in the curriculum.

Philippa Bond ● 1991d

There is a group and Facebook page called LagerCan which organises litter-picking throughout Ealing: over a thousand members including some very active ones. You can get their blue bags from local reps or green ones from the council.I focus on Acton Park and sometimes Southfields and find the most useful tool (apart from pick and bag) is a hoop for the bag- particularly helpful on windy days. they are about a tenner on Amazon.

Sara Nathan ● 1991d

Philippa. Often the street cleaners leave their bags ready to be picked up and they mix the cans etc in with the weeds and leaves.

Sarah Felstead ● 1991d

Yes it all gets incinerated from the - at the festivals I two hooped bags being held together which meant that the plastic bottles and aluminium cans could be separated. I don't think there was any glass. Aluminium and glass is infinitely recyclable and an awful lot of energy is saved by recycling.

Philippa Bond ● 1990d

https://ealingnewsextra.co.uk/features/lager-can/Thanks Sara. It must have been in 2007 that we met litter picking in Acton! All those Filthy Acton threads and the initiatives in the attempts to maintain a decent environment. Some wins and some losses.

Philippa Bond ● 1989d

Here's something I wrote in 2013 about why it is a good idea to recycle aluminium. I'm not sure what has happened to the Quilambola as the Independent is difficult to read nowadays. I can't imagine that life has got better.http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2013/10/06/no-title-no-mining-the-fight-for-land-for-the-quilombola-and-indigenous-people-of-brazil/If we recycled the aluminium that was already in the system there wouldn't be such a rush to cause distress to people like these to mine for bauxite.Bauxite may not be as scarce as other resources but processing it to make aluminium is very messy and it is not that long ago that there was a nasty accident at a Hungarian alumina plant when the toxic sludge escaped.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11475361

Philippa Bond ● 1989d