A group of dedicated volunteers met at Lion’s Park on Sunday morning to pick up rubbish for Clean Up Australia Day. Clean Up Australia Day was established in 1990 to improve the health of the environment, with a side benefit of beautifying the community by keeping the streets clean.
The volunteers, in groups of two or more, headed out to a variety of sites around Parkes, including Memorial Hill and Bushman’s Hill, Forbes Road, Orange Road and PAC Park. After braving the heat for three to four hours, the volunteers returned, having collected over 30 large bags of rubbish.
The main types of rubbish collected were glass and plastic bottles; confectionery wrappers; chip packets; take-away containers, both cardboard and polystyrene; straws; and cigarette butts (in some areas). Some of the rarer types of rubbish included a mattress, a blown-out truck tyre, and a blood-stained butcher knife. A large quantity of paper and polystyrene was found at the Industrial Estate.
Two volunteers tackled PAC Park and collected five bags of rubbish, mostly bottles, that had been deposited in the PAC Park waterway, just before it enters Goobang Creek, and there are still more bottles there to be picked up. Many of the bottles had lodged in the waterway after the flooding of September 2016, however other rubbish that has been left in the park and surrounds also ends up making its way to this waterway.
Perhaps, with the arrival of the new Return and Earn vending machine in town, there will be many less bottles in next year’s collection.
By Lisa Ramsay