The Christmas season brings huge amount of holidaying campers to pristine parts of Australia but, unfortunately, it also brings huge amounts of unwanted litter.
Despite warnings, threats, and simple appeals to common decency, some of Australia’s most beautiful paces are regularly turned into giant festive rubbish dumps. In the magnificent Booderee National Park on the NSW south coast, for example, they generally collect enough trash to fill three shipping containers. That’s 80 cubic tonnes of rubbish that is removed from the park annually, with about 90% going to landfill and the rest being recycled.
A park spokesman told the Canberra Times that the biggest problem was visitors who carelessly dispose of rubbish without considering its impact … or who is going to pick it up.
“Unfortunately in the past few years there’s been a noticeable increase in rubbish in our park, on our beaches and in our marine environment,” the spokesman said.
Booderee National Park manager Michelle Callaway said littering puts “massive strain” on park resources, and threatens birds, wildlife and the marine environment.
The park is now taking a multi-pronged approach to tackling the problem. The Canberra Times reports that rangers will engage directly with visitors, providing them with tote bags, bumper stickers and a map of rubbish drop-off points.
There will also be a ‘stick approach’ for those litterers who disregard their fellow visitors, the park’s traditional owners, or the wildlife.
“We’ll be ramping up compliance activity on our park this summer and although we’d rather not hand out fines, we will if necessary,” said Ms Callaway. “People come to visit the park for its unspoilt natural beauty and we are appealing to all visitors to help us keep it that way.”
Over a year, about 450,000 people visit Booderee National Park.
Unfortunately some people will never learn, or change. I have just ordered a rubbish pick up stick as my wife and I are constantly picking up other people’s rubbish. Beer can ring pulls and filthy cig filters are a real pain. They most likely do not read any caravan publications so are oblivious to their stupidity and lack of common sense.
Yes we have noticed. The main offenders are the younger people. 35/40 year olds and younger. Just have a look in and large town/city early in the morning around the night club areas. The rubbish is laying everywhere. These places are not attended by us “oldies”. I put it down to the way they have been brought up. Not made to pickup clean up after themselves. And they get very offended/ angry when asked to pck up their rubbish
How about media advertising to bring awareness of the problem, with a blame shame message, finishing off with a plea and reminder to keep Australia beautiful and litter free. Leave foot prints take photos.
I honestly feel the Litter problem is not only the younger generation. I believe we have Litter Bugs of all ages . It is such a shame but it is happening everywhere. Shame on all Litter Bugs. They are ignorant and disrespectful and need to clean their act up.