Ugly irony: Eco Fiesta signs now road litter
A GOOD Samaritan, who has collected rubbish along a Cairns northern beaches road, was appalled to find dumped signs from a festival celebrating the environment.
Matt Morton has been disgusted by the amount of garbage littering Holloways Beach Rd, which has included fast food containers, plastic drink bottles and even household furniture. Deciding to do something about it, the Holloways Beach resident three weeks ago started walking the 1km stretch between the Captain Cook Highway and the Oleander St roundabout collecting the rubbish.
Mr Morton said he was astonished by the hundreds of bits of litter he had found.
“I found a bar fridge in the sugar cane,” he said. “What would that have done to a farmer’s machinery, if that bar fridge was still there?”
He said he had also picked up several discarded road signs, including some advertising Cairns Regional Council’s annual Eco Fiesta.
He questioned how locals could be so careless with rubbish with Cairns being a major tourist destination.
“With the amount of money the council must be spending in cleaning up, every year — coming from our rates, that expense doesn’t need to be there,” he said. “It could be going to a far better cause around Cairns. If I was driving into Holloways Beach for the first time, and saw that amount of garbage along the road, I’d question wanting to visit or live here. We’ve got to look after ourselves better than this — we’re on the world stage.”
A council spokeswoman said it was “disappointing” that Eco Fiesta signs had been dumped along the side of the road, well after the event had been held. She said temporary signs generally needed to be removed the day following the event it advertised.
“In line with the principles of Eco Fiesta and the council’s waste reduction objectives, signs are collected immediately after the event and are either retained and re-used or repurposed,” she said.
“In this case, some of the signs have been given to local schools for use in their Cairns Festival parade floats and other projects.”
She said it was not unusual for signs to be taken from roadsides for a variety of reasons.