A bit of a dump

This little lot, hauled out from no more than 50m² of the woodland edge behind it, was just one small part of the litter and flytipping recovered from the parts of Stockwood targetted in a litter-pick on April 1^st.

Extracting it from the woods and open spaces certainly reinforces anyone's misanthropic leanings, but more positively it encourages reflection on the throwaway society, waste collection strategies, and how the hell we're going to manage when our planet acquires a new plasticised aluminised skin of snack food wrappers. (Maybe its reflective quality will compensate for the diminishing polar ice cover and we needn't worry about climate change after all? Or maybe not.)

So why do people throw it away? Not the casual thoughtless littering, but the more serious, calculated stuff, which can involve shifting heavy items a long way off-road. 

Like this stuff, dumped a good 100m along the path by Brislington Brook and slowly spread during the following week. Smaller than most fly-tips, but fairly typical of a partial house clearance, this was brought over from Withywood and just dropped, without any attempt at concealment. Possibly by the occupier named on the bills among the waste, more likely by the landlord, or maybe by white van man. I just hope the enforcement people make a better job of finding out than May Gurney made of clearing it.

One reason for the tipping must be that there's little risk of getting caught, and it would be good to see much more effective enforcement. Another's the sheer volume of stuff we're urged to throw away to make room for something else in an unsustainable economy that relies on ever increasing consumption. And another's the cost of disposing of it (especially commercial waste).

Ideally, disposal costs would be free at point of use, and met by a levy built into the price of goods to reflect their true costs. Can't see that happening though. Equally unlikely (and unfair too) would be a free 'bulk load' disposal service provided by the council at public expense. Maybe a compromise would be a mobile 'bring' site – meaning skips - on a regular rota, where residents could bring their excess property, then left awhile for those of us who might find a use for it, and the residue removed later.

No doubt Mr Pickles (whom Damien Hirst preserve) and the Daily Mail would put the whole problem down to the evil of fortnightly doorstep collection of residual waste, which, they claim, infringes the basic rights of every Englishman. Wasn't it good to see that Pickles' bribe to councils to revert to weekly residual waste collections was taken up by just one council (Gloucester city) ; all the other bidders have had the good sense to seek funding instead for such as segregated food waste collection.

Food waste recycling - that's an initiative which, I would argue, did more to demonstrate Bristol's status as a progressive modern city than any new stadium or arena could possibly have done.

Stockwood Miscellany

......mostly for Stockwood people.

At last there's a chance to recycle a bit more plastic than bottles. There's a trial run of 'bring site' collections of other food containers, and one of the sites is Tescos. Click the picture for more detail of what you can and can't take.

One day, my child, there'll be kerbside collections of plastic waste.



Another innovation outside Tesco is this ever more unnavigable barrier to progress along NCN Route 3. This started as a clear path (and why not, there's a further barrier 100m on)... then the basic barrier was put in.. then they blocked one of the side gaps that provided the route of choice for most cyclists... then they blocked the other side. The lower bar stops anything passing under the barrier. Imagine trying to get a wheelchair, or a pushbike with a trailer full of recyclable plastic , through this.

More positively..



An orchid spotted on the Open Space, during a 'Friends of Stockwood Open Spaces' (FoSOS) guided walk a week ago. I'm told it's a hybrid.



Next, an advance invitation to help contain the spread of Japanese Knotweed on the Open Space. FoSOS have organised a session to restrain the advance of this invasive plant on Sunday June 7 starting at 10.30am at the top of Scotland Lane (junction with Stockwood Lane). Bring secateurs and work gloves.



Finally, a mystery object. Well, the mystery is how and why it got here. This half bag of animal bedding appeared by the brookside path to West Town Lane, just where a FoSOS team had done a clean-up a few weeks previously. It can't have been easy to get it to this off-road site... but then it can't have been easy to dump most of the stuff (like old bikes, and doors) that we'd collected there first time round.

Fortunately, we've found an alternative use for this particular item - as a mulch on garden paths, and a trial slug deterrent on some strawberries.

A woodland carpet

Eight bags of rubbish were extracted from the undergrowth alongside the 40 metre path between Dutton Road and Lanesborough Rise this morning. That was just from one side - the other will have to wait a couple of weeks till the next bin round comes.

I'm told that when the estate was built, this was an attractively laid out route, with plantings of ornamental trees. You can still pick out the trees among the brambles

But lift a little of the leafmould, and you get the feeling that there's a permanent plastic skin spreading across the surface of the planet.

Along this path, there's plenty of the kind of rubbish you'd expect to be put out in a wheelie bin, but for some reason it's been neatly bagged up, tied - and hurled deep into the brambles.

Apart from that, there are the inevitable drinks cans and plastic bottles, often still half full. Crisp and snack packets too - with bright designs intended to catch the eye of the supermarket customer, now drawing the eye of anyone walking by the woodland.

A bit more curious are the multicoloured mass of cable insulation, the buggy, and the one ladies stiletto heeled red boot. Someone had a painful journey home!

Not much of all this was degradable - it's more likely to degrade the district.

Ironically, to leave it there would have been 'cost-free' in the economists book. By shifting it to the roadside, to be gathered up by the bin men, taken to the waste transfer station, bailed and containerised, and railed off to be reburied in some Buckinghamshire landfill, a few quid will have been added to the council's waste bills.

And maybe today's economists would welcome that as a much needed stimulus to economic activity.
...............................

There are always stories of all sorts of nefarious antisocial behaviour in this little piece of woodland. The clues in the rubbish show something different. I think there's a secret cabal of treacle addicts who assemble there by night, beyond the gaze of the dieticians. But I can't explain the heap of carrots further down the hillside. A bit back, there were oranges at the same spot - and before that, bread buns. Any ideas?

Job Creation

First, the good news. The mattress is no longer in the Brislington Brook. Congratulations to the Leisure Services people who finally organised its collection. And within the target two working days (unless you count all the earlier failures, before the whole issue was put on the net)

BUT..... the mattress was just one of half a dozen local flytipping incidents reported last Thursday. And did they collect the rest while they were here? Err.... sorry, no.

Reason is as soon as the report was made, someone checked which council department is responsible for which site. Getting the mattress cleared was the Parks people's job. While the rubbish left in Dutton Road and off Sturminster Road was the District Cleansing Officer's problem. That mess is still lying there.

So (at least) two orders to be drawn up, at least two bills to be settled, and at least two wagon trips to Stockwood to pick up half a wagonload of rubbish. Brilliant. SITA must be laughing.

Litter Piccing

The mattress has been lying around for a couple of months now. The council aims to shift flytipped rubbish in two working days, but this mattress has been a real problem. It started by the path that leads down to West Town Lane, and in no time got pushed into the brook. It's been reported a few times now, but all that's happened is that it's shifted a few yards downstream.

So I'm trying a new extra helpful strategy. Flickr has a gizmo so you can show on a map where your pictures were taken. So I've put a few current flytipping pictures - including the mattress - on there, and sent the link to the council.

They can't go wrong now, and they'll make the most of the journey.