Overflowing bins look rubbish in our park
Visitors to Paisley’s Barshaw Park have been greeted with the sight of filthy, overflowing bins with litter strewn across the grass.
Our photographer captured the sight on a visit to the town’s largest park at the end of a warm weekend when hundreds of visitors and families flocked to the park.
The Friends of Barshaw Park group say they’ve been complaining to the council for years about the amount of litter in the park.
Chair of the group Karen Sutherland said: “This is something which happens a lot at the park, especially when the weather is good.
“We ask the council to look at it every year before the summer, it’s almost a reminder to them that the bins will be overflowing when the weather is good.
“We understand the guys emptying the bins have got their own schedule and won’t always be able to fit in extra collections.
“Larger bins or more bins would help but there are some bins in the park which aren’t used as often.
“We have a lot of magpies and other birds in the park which go into the bins looking for food.
“They make a terrible mess.
“We would also urge people to use a bit of common sense and take a bit of personal responsibility and if the bins are overflowing, take your rubbish home with you.
“We are pragmatic about it.
“We know birds are taking things out of the bins, there’s a large volume of people in the park at times and we can’t always predict when that will be.
“A big help would be behaviour change from people visiting the park to walk a bit further to a bin which isn’t as full or take their own rubbish home.”
A council spokesman has called on people using the park to help keep it tidy.
He said: “Renfrewshire is lucky to have some beautiful parks such as Barshaw but for them to stay that way needs everyone to dispose of their rubbish responsibly.
“There are a number of bins around the park including large ones in the car park and we would urge people to use alternate bins where possible.
“Our teams obviously do make regular patrols of our parks to make sure bins are being emptied but with the good weather this weekend the parks have been much busier than normal.”