Natalie Bossi, Parklands
I moved to Parklands in December last year, a move I had been looking forward to for about 10 years. And I am very happy here.
I immediately noticed all the inter-linking parks in the area, which I love, but I have also noticed the ubiquitous litter everywhere – from plastic bottles to beer quart bottles lying right next to the bins provided.
People are obviously using the parks for drinking and then just dropping their bottles wherever.
Also there are quite a few cough syrup bottles lying around – their contents used together with cooldrink for the intoxicating effect.
The beautiful reed bushes are covered in trash, and even though the wind may be a contributing factor, if we did not have such a poor attitude towards our environment, there would not be trash to blow around.
People seem to remove entire black bags from wheelie bins on bin day and then, at their leisure, sift through the contents, leaving a trail of rubbish lying among the bushes and on the paths.
Within the suburb itself, I see this pattern repeated, with plastic bottles, newspapers and endless Score tins lining our streets.
Small cough mixture bottles as well again. It’s all quite sad. It looks disgusting and nobody seems to give a damn. Have we all given up?
We cannot afford to just give in to this and shrug our shoulders.
Because when in Rome, we had better not be doing as the Romans do.
What do I mean? Well, a news item recently showed a Rome that has become completely engulfed in heaps of trash, which are lining the streets of this ancient and once very beautiful city.
The Italians, it seems, have run out of dumping sites and have never made the effort to recycle and this is the result.
We are fast heading the same way, people. And poverty is not an excuse to litter.
There is a company coming round to pick up your recycling every bin day, so you can get rid of plastic bottles, glass, tins, paper, cardboard and various plastics in a bag provided by them. This is a good start.
We live in a beautiful suburb, which instead of being sprinkled with pretty parks, is littered by trash sites. I have started picking up plastic and paper from these areas, and even received an R8 off my bottle of red wine at the bottle store for handing in nine beer bottles I found. Now that’s an incentive.
Let’s make an effort to not just drop our trash in the road, and let’s recycle more, so that less lands up in our bins, parks and streets and on the dump. And let’s pick up the trash in our streets and parks. If you have rubbish lying in front of your property, pick it up, pop it into a plastic recycling bag and put it out on bin day. It gets recycled into another plastic item for further use, and it is saving our planet just a tiny bit for your children and their children. Do it for yourself and your family.
