CANAL & RIVER TRUST LAUNCHES WATERWAYS PLASTICS CHALLENGE

[Tumshie]

8 minutes ago, DaveR said:

The canals are natural litter collectors. Any trash blown from roads/estates/playing fields close by the canals has a good chance of ending up in the cut.

That true, we always end up with little collections blown in around the pontoons at my local marina and there's only one lock between us and the sea. 

 

10 minutes ago, DaveR said:

CaRT idea that in a year the problem would be solved is rather fanciful as litter is dropped every day of the year, the supply is never ending until there are more bins provided.

I don't think that they are suggesting the problem will be solved after one year and then will never have to be thought of again, just that if everybody visiting the canal for the next year picked up some rubbish then it would get on top of the problem, plus it would create a habit of litter picking among visitors that would keep the plastic issue at bay; not to mention if you are encouraging children to become aware of picking up litter you are naturally by default teaching them not to drop litter in the first place. When we see plastic waste on the telly it's always single use plastic bottles, it's rarely the kiddies Freddo Frog wrappers. You are so right about there needing to be more bins, and I know it would mean more work but they can't just be the commercial type that people fill up with fridges and settees. 

 

I think the Towpath Taskforce thing that CRT do sounds quite fun. 

[blackrose]

I'm all for cleaning up the UK's inland waterways and a lot of it comes down to public education. Perhaps we need to bring back some sort of "Keep Britain Tidy" public information campaign that we had in past decades. It's always struck me that if we can't sort out things as simple as littering or separating waste and putting recyclables into recycling bins, then what chance do we really have of addressing the much more complex environmental problems we face?

 

But let's not kid ourselves that cleaning plastics from UK waterways will have any impact on reducing ocean borne plastics globally.

 

 

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/these-10-rivers-carry-95-of-all-plastic-into-the-ocean

 

https://news.sky.com/story/just-10-rivers-carry-90-of-plastic-polluting-the-oceans-11167581

Edited June 9, 2019 by blackrose

[spud the mackem]

Going through Brentford Lock from the Thames recently ,there was so much plastic in the lock ,that you couldn't see the water.