Clean-up shows how dirty some people can be
THE litter picked up off the ground and pulled out of the roadside ditches around Dingle on County Clean-up Day last Saturday filled 60 sacks after a day’s generous effort by the volunteers who cleaned up after those who couldn’t care less about what they did with their empty bottles, cans, wrappers, coffee cups…
Twenty people joined the clean-up of the approach roads to Dingle, which was organised by Dingle Tidy Towns. More people took part in the ‘Glanadh an Earraigh’ clean up around Baile an Fheirtéaraigh, and others just went out on their own to do what they could to improve the area around their own homes.
Around Dingle, take-away coffee cups were prominent among the roadside litter, followed by drink cans, fast food wrappers. Further west, silage plastic was a notable feature while, near Baile an Fheirtéaraigh, illegally dumped electric fencing batteries added hazardous waste to the merely careless litter along one scenic boithrín.
Over the Low Road from Dingle naggin bottles were a common feature but that paled in comparison to the 300 one-litre vodka bottles pulled out of the ditches along the road from Forge Cross to Ventry. The litter pickers were staggered by the haul – although probably not as staggered as whoever dumped them. The same stretch of road has yielded similar volumes of vodka bottles over the past few years.
County Clean-up Day takes place just once a year, but the 60 bags of litter collected in the immediate vicinity of Dingle wasn’t a year’s yield. The real total would have to include the three or four bags-full of litter that Dingle Tidy Towns volunteers retrieve from the road between Ballintaggart and Dingle every six to eight weeks. A similar amount of litter is picked up along the road between Dingle and Burnham during the regular Tidy Towns clean-ups. It all points to a serious ongoing littering problem in West Kerry, despite public awareness campaigns and the threat of severe penalties for offenders.
Kerry County Council finds it is notoriously difficult to secure convictions for littering, but information gleaned from bags of illegally dumped rubbish picked up by Dingle Tidy Towns has led to one person being fined and another prosecution is currently pending.
“The whole mentality of people who will just throw litter out of a car window is desperate to witness,” says Risteard Mac Liam of Dingle Tidy Towns. “We have everything going for us with regards to scenery and the beauty of the area where we live. But we have to look after it.”
It’s important for everyone to do their bit. We can’t blame others if we don’t make an effort ourselves,” says Risteard. And with that in mind, volunteers are very welcome to join Dingle Tidy Towns’ efforts. They meet at 7pm on Monday evenings at Dingle bottle bank on The Tracks.