I’ve just been out for a run along a section of the River Aire since the floods. I know the floods have caused untold problems for people, but nothing has really been said about the environment.

For my upon mile there is plastic on the trees and plants lining the river.

A submerged car, probably one of many

Remains of a caravan, probably the one that was seen floating down the river on national news

I just can’t see anyway how this can all be cleaned up 🙁

It’s a mess. I had a ride from Bingley to Esholt last week and the scale of the rubbish left behind by the floods was shocking.
I can’t see there being the resources or funds to clean it all up.

Talk to the council/EA and see if there is any provision for volunteers to start bagging it up a section at a time for the council to take away?

Probably get some volunteers from on here, local Ramblers etc. Chance to build some bridges between user groups?

Sounds easy, no doubt a bureaucratic/H&S nightmare in practice…..

Just supposing a bunch of well-meaning folk went out to collect all the crap off the trees; I’d put money on somebody falling in the river and drowning themselves.

Darwin had a theory about that, iirc

Just think how much more junk made it out to the sea

Yay humans

Probably quite a few like minded people will volunteer to clean up places, problem is the risk assesments and wotrking near water and disposal of the waste, whos going to pay the landfill tax and skip hire

This was the stretch looking up towards Saltaire about 16 years ago – pretty much the same with bags and crap everywhere.

It seemed to dissapear all by itself, although not quite the same amount of rubbish there is now.

You can see the black squiggles where my tyres slipped off the edge as well. The rear wheel fell off and got stuck on the qr. I was slightly braver all them years ago 😆

That path is a challenge in the dry, I avoid it in the wet!
I bet it’s even harder to ride now after the floods.

The amount of plastic bottles everywhere is incredible, it really is time we started addressing the issue of non biodegradable litter, the plastic bag stance is a good start but more requires to be done. Bottled water is a nonsense IMO.

Very sad to see. 🙁

Upper parts of the Irwell look like that.

Its not the product or the makers of these things its the assholes who just chuck stuff away. Its really bad around where I stay TV’s,household goods and tyres are always getting dumped. However our council dump is a total joke when it comes to opening times.

Completely agree jordie, but that’ll never change, folk will always be lazy inconsiderate bastards, so you need to come at it from a different angle.

Surely a lot of this stuff wasn’t thrown away, it was picked up by flood water somewhere. Bit harsh to blame it all on litter louts (not that there aren’t any).

I’m not so sure captain, this is all the shit that is in hedgerows and ditches. It doesn’t get there by accident, does it?.

That’s been carried by the floods, it’s quite eye opening to see how much the rivers had risen.

I walked along there this morning too. Looks bad enough in the pic but even more so when you see the whole river stretching away into the distance.

This stretch of river is littered with Shipley’s industrial past so not exactly the most scenic. However, strides have been made to clean it up somewhat.

Yep, the paved bit can be rather slippy in the wet & in parts they camber towards the river!

Makes me spit. Weirdly it reminds me of those places tied full of new age tat (Clootie for instance) – a polyester paradise for so-called ‘pagan’ dreamers.

Sadly to be expected in a consumerist society that is now largely dependent upon oil-based products and also ideologically far-removed from nature/the source of raw materials.

I’ll never forget first arriving at Three Cliffs Bay (Gower) following winter storms a few years ago and wading shin-deep through half a mile of plastic – bottles, bags, tents, everything from electric fans to Crocs. The vast majority was tiny shards of plastic that has assumedly been floating around the oceans for decades.

Surely a lot of this stuff wasn’t thrown away, it was picked up by flood water somewhere. Bit harsh to blame it all on litter louts (not that there aren’t any).

Of course some it may have floated right out of a skip, litter bin or recycling point – although I’m of the opinion most of it is from hedgerows, woodland etc. Just returned from a section of road in the South West that has had the hedges trimmed/foliage cut back revealing rows of plastic crap thrown from car windows 😥

Its not the product or the makers of these things its the assholes who just chuck stuff away. Its really bad around where I stay TV’s,household goods and tyres are always getting dumped. However our council dump is a total joke when it comes to opening times.

Solution: when you buy your bottle of Coke the retailer charges you a £1 deposit. You get this back when you return the bottle to a recycling point (automated, obviously, stick one in every shop). This works PERFECTLY in Norway.

A plumber based somewhere around Aylesbury has developed a habit of dumping broken boilers at the side of the A41. It screams ignorance in two ways: firstly I’m pretty sure they have some scrap value and secondly, with a bit of effort they could probably be identified after chasing the manufacturer to find out the address registered for the original warranty. Also, do you want someone that moronic working with gas?

is there a volunteer group to clear this up?

is there a volunteer group to clear this up?

Not sure to be honest. I will contact the EA/Council to see if any funding is available, and what the correct process would be. As has been said above, some areas are quite dangerous and inaccessible. I think also as people have been so badly hit in the area, EA will obviously have their time filled helping people and businesses as a priority.

If nothing else I think it needs publicising so people can see how are modern life is actually screwing us up right royaly.

Solution: when you buy your bottle of Coke the retailer charges you a £1 deposit. You get this back when you return the bottle to a recycling point (automated, obviously, stick one in every shop). This works PERFECTLY in Norway.

and in Germany…. 8cents on a beer bottle, 25cents for a plastic bottle. works so well that after an evening bbq-ing down by the river people deliberately leave their bottles in little piles for the bottle fairies to collect in the morning.

No matter how bad it looks now I bet if you were to walk down the same stretch of river in 6 months time or less (assuming no more floods before then) it’ll be cleared up and clean as a whistle as if the floods never happened – just like it always – it’s not the first time places have flooded and we’re pretty good at clearing up afterwards.

I don’t believe all that stuff is just from litter. Last time I looked in hedgerows I might see the odd discarded Macdonalds carton or plastic bottle, but caravans, trailers, white goods, items of clothing and blankets, rugs etc? Not where I live at least. The flooding has swept across huge areas through residential, commercial and farming properties, town and city centres (including the street bins and recycle bins). You’re bound to get a huge amount of weird and wonderful items swept away with the flood waters. It’s not just ad hoc litter.

Upper parts of the Irwell look like that.

Before the floods……

jordie – Member

Its not the product or the makers of these things its the assholes who just chuck stuff away. Its really bad around where I stay TV’s,household goods and tyres are always getting dumped. However our council dump is a total joke when it comes to opening times.

We had our fortnightly rubbish collection this week, someone from the flats across the road (just to add I live in a flat myself) left all manner of stuff outside, the binmen took the household waste and left the TV, ironing board, bags of non househld waste, large childrens plastic toys, other plastic stuff, what looks like a vacuum cleaner and so on. About 4 days on this tat is still on the pavement, so whether they expect the council to relent and collect it is anyones guess.

and let’s not start about bags of dog sh1t left hanging on trees

A grim sight indeed. Sadly this is exactly how many rivers and sections of the coast in Asia look.

Hopefully citizens and user groups can come together for the clear up. Bigger stuff like cars in rivers are going to be a challenge

and in Germany…. 8cents on a beer bottle, 25cents for a plastic bottle. works so well that after an evening bbq-ing down by the river people deliberately leave their bottles in little piles for the bottle fairies to collect in the morning.

Same in Sweden, automated machines in supermarkets that give you credit chits that you can use at the checkouts. The homeless people pounce on any discarded bottles.

Same in Sweden, automated machines in supermarkets that give you credit chits that you can use at the checkouts. The homeless people pounce on any discarded bottles.

a few years ago TESCO had large recyling machines in their car parks at a few stores, when you scanned a botle or can you got a clubcard point, sadly some idiots decided it would be fun to set fire to the machines by pushing burning newspaper into the mc,s, and our local TESCO in a well off area has reduced the number of recycling bins due to the high amount of general waste thats dumped in them by the locals for some reason.

If it’s caught upon a bridge the EA more likely clear it. If the water is not to deep then people may wade out or use a boat if to deep and with drags pull the crap away or use grappling hooks to pull stuff out and it might be easier to let it go and get the stuff out further down stream.

A lot of the natural stuff if let go will disperse and rot down naturally along the river banks.

As for the caravan a winch tractor/landrover might be used or a long reach excavator might be brought in to help get it out and clear up the crap.

Project, the difference is that in Sweden it was in the store (next to the snus in the ICA by my office).

Might be of interest to some of you, just one section of the Aire after/before the off camber slippy slabs.

https://www.polaroidblipfoto.com/entry/2129953415906723029

Clean-up

The Denso-Marston nature reserve at the bottom of the village runs alongside the River Aire and was inundated during the Boxing Day flood. Now the water has receded all the detritus that the flood water picked up on its journey has been left behind, so a call went out for volunteers to come and help clear up the site this morning.

I was one of 60+ people that showed up, and after a few hours work we had gathered this collection of large and small items. My best find was a pristine Royal Mail boot – hopefully the postie it belongs to is safe and well somewhere. We weren’t able to access the river bank and there is still a lot of larger stuff there, but we’ve made a big difference to the main body of the reserve.

Alongside the litter there were substantial deposits of alluvial sand and mud, it will be interesting to see how this affects the ecology of this mainly woodland site. A long-term view would be that this is a natural event, but nature reserves are often heavily managed sites that keep a specific ecological moment in place, so it may be the mud is seen as problematic. I’m sure the warden will come up with a plan which is best for the site.

Update: Steve, suggests that the silt is being treated as a natural asset. There has also been a fund-raising site set up to replace all of the educational resources that have been lost and which are essential to the valuable work with children at the reserve.

https://crowdfunding.justgiving.com/denso

Also in the news…

http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/14178987.Mass_clean_up_at_Baildon_nature_reserve_engulfed_by_floods/

The most unusal thing I have came across and I think its still there is a Mk 2 Golf GTI front Grill its just lying abandoned in the middle of nowhere. I might start a new topic tomorrow of weird stuff dumped around the countryside. Those in charge really think by selling poly bags at 5p is going to stop all this. What I dont get is the large amounts of tyres lying at the side of the road who changes there own car tyres????

If you are volunteering to clean up any mes, then try and get the Local Authority, or Landowner to take the rubbish away.
A local (to me) chap had a thing about cleaning up the loacal river, and got 20+ bags of rubbish out of the river in 2 days. However, as it was a rvierbank, and with little access, it was rather difficult to get rid of the waste.
Rivers are a little strange, as the LA does not own them (in most places), and many landowners cannot afford to keep them clean, so they are left as they are, with detirtus all over.
2 threads here, with the ‘official’ response to volunteer cleaners:
http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?34498-Two-very-different-paddles-in-Leicester

http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?35897-River-Clean-Ups-Be-careful!

I live by the River Aire in Bingley and my house was flooded, if anyone sees a pr of grey furry slippers hanging in a tree I don’t want them back, thanks. I’ve got a shit load more to deal with at the moment. 🙂 😥

Kirkby Lonsdale locals organised a day of cleaning up along the river walkway after the first floods in the area in December. Worked really well with a good turnout.

If there is a good community spirit then this could work well in other areas. Might take some organising and awareness raising, but why not.

Or get everyone on the dole (who is able to work) out litter picking 😛

A plumber based somewhere around Aylesbury has developed a habit of dumping broken boilers at the side of the A41. It screams ignorance in two ways: firstly I’m pretty sure they have some scrap value and secondly, with a bit of effort they could probably be identified after chasing the manufacturer to find out the address registered for the original warranty. Also, do you want someone that moronic working with gas?

But you also need to understand the hassle/cost for stuff to be dumped legally. After living in Aylesbury for many years I was quite surprised how ‘liberal’ the tip guys are now where we live – but as the bloke said to me, if we reject anything it’ll only get dumped by the side of a road.

Not defending in any way, but I can see why those who are less conscious about ‘laws’ behave like they do.

The Wharfe at Ilkley was bad also, not plastic like the Aire but mainly Champagne bottles and Hummus tubs.

http://m.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/14178987.Mass_clean_up_at_Baildon_nature_reserve_engulfed_by_floods/

the big stuff will get cleared by the authorities sharpish as it will block bridges etc and risk more flooding. smaller stuff might get cleared one day.

On this occasion it wont be so much of an issue of dimwits littering. Much of this stuff will have been in people’s houses, shops, businesses, drains, bins, farms and been ripped out and dragged downstream in the flood. if you do volunteer to clean it up wash your hands after.