People Are Rubbish

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About a month ago my Mum, sister and I went on a walk and my sister decided to bring a bag to collect rubbish along the way. Having never done this myself I didn't think there would be much to pick up. Unfortunately I was wrong.

We went on a 5.1km walk taking us 1 hour 30 minutes, which would normally only take around 40 minutes not stopping to collect rubbish. We found the following:

First half of the walk:

 Second half of the walk:

I think we were all in shock at the amount we picked up, on a walk that we do quite often. We even found plastic bags on the way to use to hold more rubbish. Some items like this fizzy drink can had been there for an extremely long time. As you can see it has started to break down but due to the material it would still remain in the ground for years to come had we not picked it up.


Another find was 'six pack rings', which are the connecting plastic rings to hold cans together. These end up in our oceans and killing sealife. If we don't start picking items like this off the ground and disposing of them in the correct way, they will end up in our oceans, or littering our island forever.


Another one of my finds was this glass Lucozade bottle. From the roadside I could only see the lid so I was surprised to pull this out. Having done a little research online I discovered that you can no longer by a Lucozade in a glass bottle so this must quite old! My sister has enquired with Lucozade to find out exactly how old this might be, so I will update this post when we find out the answer.


A few weeks later, my friend Steph and I went on a small walk around the lanes from our house, and I made the decision to take a bag with me to collect some rubbish on the way. We walked 3km and found the following:


There were over 11 coffee cups, bottles, cans and sweet wrappers etc.

Another frequent find is plastic straws. These are only ever used for a moment and are then thrown away, but unfortunately they will stay on the planet forever as most aren't recyclable.


It's important to remember that rubbish must be clean in order to be recycled - simply get a bucket or hose and rinse them out to put it in your recycling and put the rest in the bin.

Last week I took part in the Surfers Against Sewage Big Spring beach clean, organised by Plastic Free Guernsey. Over 100 people took part and found over 89kg of rubbish, along just one stretch of coastline. Seeing so many people participating is going to have such a positive impact on our island.

What can you do?
Recycle
Take your rubbish home, and put it in the bin/recycling
Use a reusable travel cup for coffee/tea
Use a resubale water bottle
Refuse the straw - if you still want to use drinking straws you can purchase glass, bamboo or stainless steel reusable ones

Next time you go for a walk, take a bag with you or participate in a local beach clean to see what you can find and help reduce the amount of litter. It is really rewarding to see these roads and beaches cleaner and just doing this is a great starting point to making the world a greener place.

 ♥ 


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