A constituent came up to me once and asked, “When’s rubbish day, Bri?”. Before I could answer my mate Dave said, “Every day’s rubbish day in Bridgwater!” Of course, what he meant is that here in Bridgwater we have a big problem with rubbish. Not do we just have seagulls who fly upstream and think the houses along the riverbank are cliffs, perch on them and then love to swoop down on poorly bagged bags of rubbish, but we have a peculiar wind system in the town that rolls and blows and swirls around the flat streets and disperses the debris to all the unwanted nooks and crannies that you can’t quite get to. And that’s before we get to the waste simply dropped by thoughtless idiots or the latter-day thought-out equivalent, ‘fly tipping’. So, I decided to go out with the Town Council street team and see for myself how they were coping.

When you see your streets looking spotless you don’t instantly realise that some people have been out there since 4am doing that for you. Pete (not his real name) makes a point of getting out there before the team officially start so he can prepare the routes. When you see a discarded fast-food bag it’s not always the best advert for the logo branded litterbuggers, but these things don’t just pick themselves up, somebody else has to. And it’s one of our team. Usually Jean-Luc (not his real name).  Then when you see a large pile of smashed up sideboards, discarded mattresses and what was once a much-favoured child’s toy crumpled and unwanted on the side of the road, that’s the modern scourge of fly tipping. This indeed is an increasingly new issue brought about by rising disposal costs, rogue traders, lack of enforcement and reduced recycling centre hours. And of course, by laziness.

Get a grip

In the Unitary changes of 2023 Bridgwater Town Council decided we needed to get a grip on the cleaning of our neighbourhoods and so keeping the streets clean and picking up the fly tipping fell to us. We took a look at town centre locations where bins overflowed, people left stuff around them rather than putting it in them and the wind and the birds did the rest. But someone has to pick all that up. Which we do. And take it away in one of our new electric flatbed lorries.

But our people aren’t there because they have a special interest in rubbish, it’s because someone’s got to do the stuff, so you don’t have to. That said I was once litter picking along the canal and became fascinated by a beer bottle with a brand that had been extinct since the 1930’s. I dug it out and binned it. Hopefully the foundations of the Albert street bridge weren’t dependant on it.

Organised

I’m not trying to say that litter picking can be fun. Although it can. I recently did an organised pick in Victoria and a whole family was out there. The dad said the kids loved the feeling that they were doing their bit for the community. And it reminded me of my first visit to communist Czechoslovakia where every Saturday people went out as their solemn duty as citizens and cleaned up their neighbourhood.

Admittedly if they didn’t, they’d have been shot.

But I think the point is that education is quite important. Don’t drop litter because you know we’ll pick it up, just don’t drop litter! Then there’s less for us to pick up.

Wombles

One of the worst own goals in this respect was the Wombles. These furry little furbies picked up the litter dropped on Wombledon common.  They were fictitious. But kids eagerly dropped more litter just so the wombles would pick it up. And of course they didn’t. The Wombledon Waste Wubbish department had to.

And of course, there needs to be enforcement. A few persistent perpetrators punished would set an example. Locked in a padded cell and made to listen to ‘Remember You’re  a Womble’ over and over again and they’d crack. It’s what Stalin would have done. That said I’m not sure I remember a Lavrentiy Beria Womble….