Fly-tipping is illegal but on the increase - a sign of the times!

 

Illegally dumped rubbish. Photo by Steve Andrews

Fly-tipping or illegal dumping is on the increase in many places. It is unsightly, a potential health hazard, damaging to the environment and against the law.

Sadly our countryside, back lanes, roadsides and other areas of public space are getting filled with rubbish. Litter is bad enough, especially plastic items that can end up in rivers and drains and make their way to the sea where they can kill turtles, seabirds and whales, but all sorts of domestic and industrial garbage and waste materials are getting dumped. 

Plastic bags can easily get blown into waterways or end up in the branches of trees or stuck in bushes and hedgerows.

It is mainly domestic rubbish that gets so irresponsibly dumped like this but also materials from industry and construction gets thrown away too. Besides looking like the mess that it is, illegally dumped rubbish attracts rats and other pests, and can contain dangerous toxic materials that can be a serious health risk to animals and humans.

Large items, such as mattresses, old cookers and fridges, are just as likely to be dumped as bags of smaller types refuse.  Clothes, kitchen utensils, toys, garden rubbish, broken glass, carpets, rugs, bricks, building materials, televisions, tyres, broken flowerpots, tiles and furniture are some of the items and materials that are often thrown away like this.

Fly-tipping in Portugal Photo by Steve Andrews

The varied and beautiful countryside of Portugal, where I am now living, is so often spoiled by this serious problem. Back home in the UK the situation is just as bad. 

A report by The Guardian newspaper states that fly-tipping is up as much as by 20% in England after many years in which it was diminishing. 

Higher taxes on legally dumping rubbish at landfill sites, as well as cuts in local services are blamed for the problem. Closures of recycling depots and not as efficient local rubbish collection services have helped increase the problem of fly-tipping too. 

Although flytipping is against the law and local authorities will take action to prosecute offenders, it is often difficult to find out who the culprits are and much of the activity is carried out under cover of darkness. 

It is difficult to understand the people who care so little about the environment and the health of others with the eyesores they create with their illegal dumping of trash. 

Personally it makes me very annoyed seeing how this problem is getting worse. It really ruins my day when I am out enjoying a walk but come across a mouldering pile of refuse cast into an area of natural beauty!

So what can be done about this?  Of course, if we see it going on we can call the police, or if by some chance we know who is responsible then it can be reported. Unfortunately this environmental crime is so often carried out under cover of darkness.

Perhaps local groups of volunteers can be organised to help clean up countryside sites too? 

It is really such a shame and a sad sign of the times to see our rural areas being turned into rubbish dumps!

Concert for Ocean Aid is an idea

Plastic rubbish on a beach

An idea based on Live Aid and Band Aid

I don't know about you but the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the appalling way the clean-up and stopping of the leak was handled really depressed me. I still cannot stop thinking about all the billions of sea birds, turtles, dolphins, fish and other marine creatures that will have lost their lives because of this tragedy, and the damage to the coast and marshland, as well as to the livelihoods of people who live in the States affected, is immeasurable.

Besides the ongoing ecological disaster, there is the very serious danger being caused by marine pollution by plastic. David de Rothschild sailed across the Pacific Ocean on 2009 on a catamaran made entirely from used plastic bottles and called the Plastiki. One of the main purposes of his expedition was to raise awareness of the pollution of the oceans by plastic waste.

All over the world people who are disgusted by what has happened to our seas are saying something must be done. I have been thinking deeply about it all and have come up with an idea based around the success in the past of the Band Aid charity single and the more recent Live Aid rock and pop concerts.

Ocean Aid the concert

The original idea for Band Aid had been hatched by Sir Bob Geldof, who with the help of Midge Ure, had assembled a collection of pop and rock singers to lend their talents to a charity single entitled Do They Know It's Christmas? It was recorded and released under the collective name of Band Aid.

Bob Geldof

It swiftly became a number one single. Singers involved included Bono from U2, Boy George, George Michael, Bananarama and Paul Young.

From this in 1985, Live Aid followed on and in 2005 there was Live 8. These massive charity concerts featured appearances by a host of internationally famous pop and rock stars and were screened worldwide so were seen by billions of people.

If such events could be organised to help benefit the starving and poor people of the world then why not a similar effort being made to raise awareness about the dangers to our oceans and to raise funds for their protection?

As to where the money raised would go that would have to be worked out. There are activist groups like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd that work on marine environmental campaigns but there are many more organisations that are concerned with keeping the oceans as they should be. Perhaps a new one could be set up inspired by the growing need for something to be done to protect the oceans and their ecosystems?

It is not just plastic pollution and the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is killing marine life. Overfishing, bottom trawling and over-acidification of the seas are all wreaking havoc too. Because the water is becoming too acid coral reefs are disappearing and along with them go the complicated and very beautiful ecosystems of life that depend on them.

Anyway, having come up with the idea I did a bit of "Googling" to see if the term Ocean Aid was already being used. I was very pleased to find that a team of people have thought like me and that Ocean Aid 2010 had already been organised.

That doesn't stop a much bigger global event or series of concerts at stadium-sized venues to also happen though. An Ocean Aid single could be written, recorded and released and possibly to be followed by an album of songs written specially for it. The concert or concert series could all be recorded both as sound recordings and as visual footage that could be broadcast on worldwide TV and sold later as DVD releases.

Then there would be Ocean Aid merchandising. The possibilities are endless.

I am sure very many stars from the world of pop and rock music would be only too glad to be involved in this. Film stars and other celebrities could appear on stage at the concerts too as special guests.

It would of course be a lot of work organising all this that I have outlined here, but it has all been done before and to great success. I am presenting here the seed of the idea.

What is needed now is Sir Bob or someone else with the celebrity status and power to make this happen! Now are we going to make this happen? Who can help?

Ocean Aid links

·        Marine pollution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

·        David de Rothschild's supporters and fans on Facebook
Facebook site for David de Rothschild's supporters and fans

·        The Plastiki Expedition
The Plastiki, a boat made from 12,500 Plastic bottles, sailing from San Francisco to Sydney on a mission to showcase waste as a resource and highlight plastic pollution.