At least 40 volunteers came along to Howardian Nature Reserve on a wet and windy February morning. They removed an appalling amount of fly-tipping from a watercourse that runs along the edge of the reserve, and also cleared a lot of scrap metal from an ‘encampment’ that had been made amongst the trees.
The fly-tipped rubbish included the usual domestic waste (eg, food packaging and drinks bottles & cans), plus 4 walking frames, 2 wheeled ‘tri-walkers’, a large number of toys, numerous footballs, bags of clothing, a lot of shoes (quite a few of which appeared to be new and unworn), a leather sofa, a double-bed base, numerous chairs (wooden and metal), several carpets, seemingly endless amounts of chipboard from kitchen units and flat-pack furniture (most of which was now wet and crumbling), bags of unopened canned food, polystyrene packing materials, several children’s bikes, a child’s slide, a flatscreen TV, and the inevitable traffic cone.
The most upsetting part – aside from the eyesore and pollution of a watercourse – was the fact that so many of the items could have been re-used by others.
The total haul was about 5 tipper-loads of rubbish, plus a trailer-load of scrap metal.
Many thanks to Jess and Alec from the Community Park Rangers – Wild About Cardiff – for their support, and for ferrying a lot of the rubbish using their wonderful electric buggy…
… and to enforcement staff from the council, who will be investigating the fly-tipping, to find evidence that will identify the culprits.
Lots more photos on Flickr.