Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s picking up the litter we go...

Comment Fordyce Maxwell

In Greek legend Sisyphus was condemned to push a boulder up a hill. Every time he reached the top, it rolled back and he had to start again. For eternity. And that, as some philosopher – or perhaps pop song writer – once said is a long, long time.

We all think we’ve been close to that with some repetitive tasks. Daily mucking out of animals, for instance. Washing working boilersuits and children’s clothes. The daily grinding routine chores of caring for the sick or elderly.

Or trying to contain the rubbish that appears and accumulates in our countryside, along our rivers, round our lochs, on our beaches, on the streets of villages, towns and cities and, yes, on too many of our farms.

There is a small satisfaction in clearing a small section or area. But also frustration and irritation even while doing it in knowing thatitwillhavetobecleared again within a day or two or at best a few weeks. And that will continue unless we all change our ways and thinking, our apparent belief that rubbish and the debris of modern life and work is always someone else’s responsibility.

Plastic rubbish in the world’s seas and rivers and on beaches has had much publicity recently. Taking part in trying to keep one small beach on Britain’s east coast clean isn’t much when we’re told that about 90 per cent of ocean plastic comes from ten big rivers – two in Africa, eight in Asia – but at least it’s an attempt.

On our particular beach the biggest problem is not large items, although the thicker bottom ends

0 Sisyphus had to push a boulder up a hill for eternity of beer and juice cans are common, it is fragments of plastic coffee cups. Thousands of plastic slivers brought in on every tide

On other beaches, such as reported from Gullane recently, hundreds of plastic-stemmed cotton buds, flushed down toilets, appeared. Anyone who has tried to rogue an infestation of stunted wild oats in a grain crop will know the feeling of there always being another one lurking when trying to clear something like that.

Likewise anyone who has seen television pictures of the horror of plastic debris and sewage going down a big river, such as the Ganges, will know that collecting a few kilos of plastic on a British beach can seem a waste of time. But not quite. It’s still worth making the effort.

I also mutter that to myself when picking litter off our streets and roads. On one of my regular local walks recently I filled a black bin bag mainly with coffee cartons, cans, drinking straws and fast-food boxes and wrappers.

I don’t like to be ageist, but it doesn’t take a detective to realise that it isn’t senior citizens throwing this rubbish out of cars. Or having a get-together in a car park with a scenic view and leaving a pile of debris within ten yards of a litter bin. Someone else will pick it up.

Fly-tipping has also become a countryside curse. There might be legislation and fines can be applied, but first the miscreant has to be found.

Where farmers can do something positive is in their own backyards. There are a few extremely tidy farms, usually crop growing with no livestock. There are also many that we can call farm-tidy. That is, not pristine, but with everything in its place and no rubbish lying about.

There are also some horrors. It’s not even out of sight, out of mind because many of the heaps of rubbish, old machinery, mounds of bale netting, string, silage wrapping, chemical containers, rusty corrugated iron, broken hurdles, rusty gates, sheets of asbestos, old nets, and more are in plain sight.

It is behaviour that baffles me, but it’s difficult to know what would make such farmers change any more than knowing what would make youngsters stop throwing litter from their cars or dropping it on the street. Chopping hands off might be a start, but probably difficult legislation to pass.

All obvious evidence suggests that at least half the population couldn’t care less about rubbish. Those of us who do can only keep rolling the boulder.