Dumping the dirty work on good citizens
THE temperature may be wobbling slightly, but the heatwave goes on — even though the only waves I want are in the sea.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to splash about in them. But sure as hot night follows sweltering day, a woman from Wales is dragging a refuse bag around her local beaches every evening.
The time she spends picking up other people’s rubbish must stretch into infinity by now — reminding me of that story about Aristotle (or is it Saint Augustine), contemplating the mysteries of the universe as he walks along a beach at sunset.
He notices a boy running back and forth from the water to a hole in the sand, using a spoon to carry water from the sea — and the child explains he is trying to pour all the sea into the hole.
Aristotle laughs that this is impossible. And then the boy replies that it is no more absurd than trying to fathom the universe with our thoughts — which are the equivalent of a spoon.
Certainly, how we think about the world has contributed to our crappy crisis. This woman is well aware of the seemingly futile nature of her task. “There may be nothing here tomorrow because I’m picking it all up today,” she says (proving hope springs as eternal as the rubbish dumped on our beaches), before experience prompts her to add: “but I suspect there will be.”
Maybe she should take a break from filling bins to post a big fat bill to the local authority for doing their job for them.
For dumping is a serious issue in this era of climate change and environmental disasters. And instead of dumping the dirty work of picking it up on conscientious citizens, the local authority should pick up the slack and deal with it. Acknowledging that the Government binning the bin tax was a rubbish idea could be a start?
As the woman says “there is no system to collect rubbish, so what happens is it just gathers and eventually gets washed away and turns up on another beach. So somebody has to pick it up”.
That somebody should surely be the local council. But she tells me that they usually only collect whatever rubbish is left at the cliff top. And that happens just once a fortnight. This means most of the rubbish is still on the beaches.
And the first thing you see — and smell — when you arrive at these beauty spots is rotting rubbish.
Nor are there bins on any of the beaches in the area (except for one notable exception, that has a dog waste disposal and supplies refuse bags).
“The council says if there was one on the beach, then people would dump their domestic rubbish in it. But even a recycling bin for the tins and glass would help,” says our woman from Wales.
In the meantime, it’s one beautiful person against all the beasts. With this Welsh wonder woman carrying her spoon back and forth along several beaches — day in, day out — trying to clean up after the dirty dozen who destroy them for everyone.
Making me her No.1 fan.