Chislehurst has had a problem with littering and graffiti in the past. There have been multiple reports of overflowing bins, the most recent being in July 2018. Since then, a group of volunteers from the Chislehurst society have been trying to tackle this littering problem.
The Chislehurst society has a group of motivated volunteers who give up their time once every two months to clean up Chislehurst of all its litter and graffiti to restore the beauty of the village. These volunteers, of all ages, give up their mornings to collect trash and clean up the area. Littering is a big problem around Chislehurst and the village needs people like this to help to keep its environment clean and beautiful for all visitors.
Volunteers are out in the early morning to start cleaning up any litter they find into purple bags that are then collected by the council. I witnessed these volunteers one morning and was amazed by the fact they are doing this to keep Chislehurst litter free. Litter has had a lot of impact on our world and global warming. Methane is one of the most powerful greenhouse gasses and is 23 times stronger than CO2 in capturing heat. One of the biggest producers of methane is decomposing garbage in landfills. This why it is important for us to reduce, reuse and recycle whenever possible. The less we have to throw away, the less garbage ends up in landfills. Whilst looking into this, I found a very eye-opening fact about global warming. We have 11 years until the damage that we have done to the planet becomes irreversible. If we continue to act as we are, the planet will be destroyed by 2048. The fact that we have so little time to save this planet is shocking. If we don’t do something now, no matter how big or small, we will destroy this beautiful world forever.
In the last few weeks an organisation, Extinction Rebellion, has been staging peaceful protests in Central London to highlight the global environmental crisis. Inspired by the Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg, the group has motivated thousands of like-minded citizens to protest as never before. Whether you agree with their actions or not, it has certainly opened all of our eyes as to the scale of the problem of pollution, in particular, the destruction caused to our natural world by single-use plastics.
Activities such as those undertaken by the Chislehurst society cleaning up litter is just one small thing that can help. If we all can do things like this, whether it is putting your waste into recycling more or buying reusable products, we can slowly try and turn this around and save this planet we live on.
