Over the last few years i have noticed the amount in local woodlands increasing year on year.
Therefore i decided to do a survey and to understand the nature of the problem.
I surveyed nine local woods by counting the amount and sorts of litter i saw during a two mile walk.
The worst I found was Belfairs woods in Castle Point Borough Council near Southend on Sea, Essex, England. There I counted 571 pieces of litter. This compared with only 45 pieces in Hockley woods only three miles away.
Both woods are popular with the local population. Both have a car park and a playground. Belfairs has a golf course as well, but not much litter was seen on the fairways.
So there is no obvious reason why one should be heavily littered and the other not.
There were however some points which seemed to accumulate more litter than other place. These were roads; lanes; carparks; schools; supermarkets; lakes and playgrounds. However the only place which had lots of litter and lots of amenities was Swayne park, which has a playground, supermarket; car park and a lake.
Noticeably the woods which were heavily littered were close to surrounded by residential streets. This was true of Belfairs; Swayne and West woods. The others were bordered by farmland or other woods. Both Swayne and West woods also had a school bordering the area.
Looking at the types of litter being dropped showed that nearly 60% of all the litter was packaging from crisps and sweet packets.
Considering what the litter was actually made of showed that over 90% of all the litter was plastic. The remainder was 7% metal and the rest made up by glass, polystyrene, clothing and cardboard.
Some of the older litter appeared to have been partially chewed by animals. This was particularly true of drink cans but was also true of some plastic bottles as well. Much of the older plastic packaging also has been shredded by something, however there is not enough evidence to say it was caused by wildlife.
In many places litter seemed to have built up over time, with autumn leaf falls between each year’s layer of rubbish. This was mainly true close to car parks and schools. In the case of car parks much of the litter was made up of abandoned poo bags.
As plastics are made out of petrochemicals (oil), the creeping littering of the English countryside could be said to be equivalent to an oil slick. If a major oil slick appeared on one of England’s beaches, there would most likely be quite a storm. But because the litter is left by all of us, no one says anything.
Perhaps they should.
Giblicom's Blog 