a team of five who meet once a month to talk about future plans and allocate tasks. Suggestions from volunteers or members of the public are welcome. It’s clear that the amount of litter on the streets in the centre of town is much less than a year ago. However, problems remain. Though clearing litter does help, because most people are much less likely to drop litter on the ground if there is none there already, there are certain groups in the population who drop litter routinely, and drop a lot. Smokers are big culprits. ‘The only things I throw on the ground’, said one young man to me,’are my cigarette ends. They’re bio-degradable’. Well, yes, but so is orange peel, and paper bags and dog poo. Once you have drifts of cigarette ends outside pubs and under benches, in the gutters and against buildings, you have litter, so you get more litter. If traders in the town would just sweep the bit of pavement outside their premises once a day to tidy away the cigarette stubs, cash point receipts and the rest, a five-minute job, it would all look much better. Many already do and always have done. Lidl and Cornwall Farmers sweep their outside areas daily and it shows. The new double bins in the centre and at the bus station have ashtrays, so there really is no excuse for stubs under the benches. Young people like to meet with their cars in car parks or on Dartmoor and no-one objects to that, but there are a few groups who leave a great deal of litter, including half-full food containers and deliber- ately broken bottles behind them. This happens in the West Devon Business Park where I and others clean it up several times a week. The owner is trying to deal with the problem, but, unless the miscreants are caught and persuaded to change their habits, the problem continues. Litter along the routes to
Tavistock College is significantly reduced during school holidays. There is a small minority of students who drop litter, but they throw down several items every day, which quickly accumulates. The College doesn’t pick up the litter along its Crowndale Road path and, some months ago, removed the two bins near the main gate. Cleaning that section of path is done entirely by members of the public. The rest of the cycle path round the school is, at
present, the responsibility of Devon County Council, using SW Highways. They are never going to have the resources to carry out routine litter collections there, so, again, people walking along do it. Morrisons has a difficult site. The store does manage to keep the car park itself and the recycling area as clean as possible, but the bushes and shrubberies are another matter. I recently picked up 65 plastic gloves from the bushes around the petrol station alone. Sadly, one source of litter, especially in the countryside, comes from the recycling lorries. If the sides are left open and the contents not securely trapped inside, the paper and plastic bottles fly out along the route.
have to be persuaded not to. This is why Tidy Tavi is now informing residents that we are going to come to their area, in the hope that the residents of a neighbourhood will see us in action, think ‘That’s not too difficult’, or even, ‘Those people are enjoying themselves,’and take charge of their own environment. To celebrate the first year we are going to hold a Quiz Night on 19th October in the Tavy Club on King Street from 7pm, open to everyone. The entrance fee of £3.00 per person will include a buffet, while we shall be selling raffle tickets for a large number of prizes and donating the money received to charity. There’s a prize for the winning quiz team of course, and I’ve been assured that the questions won’t be too obscure!
Some of the problems look quite easy to fix. For instance, identifying each waste bin in Tavistock with a number, as is the case with lamp- posts, would make reporting a damaged or overflowing bin much easier. Volunteers could label each bin, given a map of the bins by the local authority. Other issues are much more complicated, but I feel that Tavistock residents don’t look on litter now as something that we just have to put up with, like the wet summer. Clearly, the litter problem can’t be permanently solved by residents picking it up: people who drop it
The Tavy Club is kindly selling tickets for the event. If you’d like to get in touch with
Tidy Tavi, you can use the website
www.tidytavy.co.uk or ring me on 01822 614821. We meet on the first Saturday in the month, at 9.50 at the Wharf. Bags, pickers and hoops are provided, but please bring your own gloves.
Thanks to all the people who have helped over the last year, whether from an office, by picking up litter or with encouraging words. Let’s make Tavistock even better in the next year!
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