Volunteers muck in to clear litter around city
‘‘People have an idea there is some magic cleaning system somewhere.’’ Heather Knox Challenge co-ordinator
Small armies of Palmerston North residents have been trudging through city parks and streams cleaning up litter.
On Saturday Palmy’s Plastic Pollution Challenge explored Monrad Park in the rain, picking up 33.5 kilograms of rubbish among 25 helpers.
They recorded their finds on the Litterati app on their phones, helping create amap of where the litter problems lie.
And on Sunday, Te Ao Tu¯roa led one of a series of Arohatia Te Kawau efforts to clean up the Kawau Stream, with 45 people, including sponsors from Iplex, collecting 86.5kg of rubbish.
Palmy’s Plastic Pollution Challenge co-ordinator Heather Knox, who rolled up her sleeves for both events, said it was sad to see how some people treated the environment.
At Monrad Park, a lot of the litter was foodwrappings, bottles and cans, even shoes and socks, that tended to accumulate by the hedges around the perimeter of the park.
There were also tyres and larger domestic items that suggested fly-tipping.
Along the banks of the Kawau Stream between Monrad St and Amberley Ave there was a tidemark of little bits of plastic and partly degraded food wrappers left behind after heavy rain in the previous days.
The volunteers also hauled out a chair, a basketball hoop, wood, pipes and seven tyres.
Knox said an earlier cleanup along the stream had yielded even more ‘‘big stuff’’, such as carpet, sofas and chairs.
A group of pupils from Monrad Intermediate School had removed 200kg of rubbish from the Tu¯ı¯ Park area.
She said part of the problem was that many people did not see their drains and streams as an important part of the environment.
They did not see the connection between dropping litter thatwould bewashed through the stormwater system and its effects on the Manawatu¯ River.
‘‘People have an idea there is some magic cleaning system somewhere.’’
But when it came to the larger items, she thought that was a symptom of other problems. She said when people were under pressure to empty rental units and could not afford the cost of disposing of furniture and other large items responsibly, looking after the environment was probably not their top priority.
Knox was keen towork with the city council on affordable schemes that would deal with those sorts of problems.
There is another public stream cleanup day at the Te Kawau Stream between Amberley Ave and the racecourse on Tuesday September 29, from 10am until 11.30am.