Litter louts come in surprising form
By Giles Knowles (June 21005)On a footpath through Plantation Wood Over I came across a party of ramblers, all middle-aged or above. They were walking along when I suddenly noticed the odd piece of paper on the ground. I kept my eyes open. Yes, it was definitely a sweet wrapper, a Twix wrapper to be precise.
I had my target in view and so I called out, “Excuse me; I think you’ve dropped something!” They stopped and turned to face me. I held up the offending piece of wrapping paper. “I’m glad to see that you are keeping your energy levels up, but do you have any idea how long it takes for this Twix paper to decompose?”
There was a guilty silence. I had ruined their ‘ramble’.
“Look,” I said, “I know it’s easily done, but wrappers like this take years to decompose. A banana skin takes from two to four years to completely decompose and a plastic bottle never breaks down.”
... The second group were some lads and lasses on a Duke of Edinburgh Award practice walk. They were packing up after a lunch break. I stopped a few yards away and looked at ‘nothing in particular’ through my field glasses. I turned to them, and said, not too pompously I hope:
“You lot have made a good job of clearing up. Not a speck of rubbish to be seen. I wish you were all like this.” They looked at one another as if to say “Who the hell is this creep?” One of the lads said: “Well, we get the ‘environmental bit’ rammed down our throats at school.”
“Do you think that it’s a good thing or not? Would you prefer to see the countryside littered with coke tins, plastic wrappers and drink bottles? Or, more to the point, your garden covered with the graffiti of litter?” I replied.
A girl spoke: “No, of course we don’t, but I wish the ******** who do this sort of thing were really hit hard by the Law. No one seems to give a toss! No one gives a monkey about a fag-end flipped into the street or the wrappings from a takeaway just ******* dropped into the road!”
I thought, now that’s a girl after my own heart.