Rubbish - my latest "Nature Notes" article

Yes! This month I’m talking rubbish; and I think I’m fairly well qualified to do this, as I volunteer as a “litter champion” and go out several times each month to pick litter and other rubbish off my local streets and footpaths. Sadly, there’s often an awful lot to collect. The reason for mentioning it here is that rubbish is not only unsightly, it can often cause harm to wildlife (and also to pets, farm stock and unwary people, too). Much of the litter we carelessly discard fails to rot away or biodegrade, and therefore hangs about for a very long time. And it doesn’t just sit there; drinks cans can disappear into long grass, only to be mangled up when the roadside verges are mowed, or when a farmer mows down thistles or nettles in a grazed meadow, leaving sharp shards of metal to cause injury. Broken glass is an even more obvious hazard, and there’s a lot of it about, I find, as I do my litter-picking rounds.

Much of what we discard has held food or drink, and may therefore be tempting to wildlife. Not all the food we like is all that good for us, and it may not be good for wildlife, either. Salty or excessively sweet foodstuffs may be harmful; creatures may also be trapped by sticky residues. And the packaging itself can be dangerous; animals foraging inside can be trapped, and I have known of hedgehogs trapped by their own spines in yoghurt pots and similar packaging, for example. The plastic loops that link drinks cans are particularly nasty, and can trap fish and diving birds if in the water, or ensnare a variety of birds and small mammals on land. Cut or snap the plastic loops before discarding them in bins.

Cigarette smokers, sadly, are in my experience major contributors to urban and rural litter. Cigarette stubs are biodegradable, it’s true, but they still look very ugly. A friend of mine who can’t break the habit always carries a tin to put his stubs into. We know tobacco is a potential health risk, and we use nicotine as a pesticide, so it surely can’t be good to be scattering it about the place!


A number of TV documentaries recently have focused on the growing problem of plastic debris in the oceans; even thousands of miles from inhabited land, plastic bags and bottles sail our seas. They just don’t degrade!  What’s worse is that floating plastic bags, whether in the sea or in a local pond or river, can look enough like appetising food to tempt creatures into swallowing them. Even though they may not cause direct harm, they remain inside and severely limit the ability of the animal to digest enough real food to sustain itself. Discarded fishing-lines, hooks and weights pose a danger to water birds, and can kill. Fly-tipped rubbish, and from time to time run-offs from official landfill sites, can cause pollution of water-courses. Please, wherever you go, take your litter home with you or use a bin (there are plenty about, for example 108 just in Welshpool, I’m told). And in general, the less we dump, even legally, the better: re-use or recycle as much as you can.