PEOPLE who value a clean urban and rural environment must hope it was the range of activities on offer last weekend and not creeping apathy which saw the annual Clean Up Australia event fail dismally.
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Instead of an army of volunteers equipped with gloves and yellow garbage bags Orange could hardly muster a handful of helpers for this national cause.
It was one of the busiest weekends on the city calendar with the Colour City Running Festival, the James Sheahan Catholic High School market day and the Orange Bridal Expo all draw cards which clashed with the clean-up day.
It would have been disheartening for those few individuals who helped organise the day that so few turned up it could have been cancelled.
However a walk around Orange still reveals shopping trolleys dumped in storm water canals, parks and wetlands littered with plastic bags and takeaway food packaging, and roadsides and rest areas fouled with litter and garbage from illegal dumping.
In past years scores of people and some of our more civic minded corporate citizens have tackled parks, stretches of major roads and well known bush land dumping spots.
If community attitudes have changed the question is why. There appears to be just as much littering as in the past and the lack of an annual clean-up day would only see it build up to disgraceful levels.
As long as people would rather toss their garbage out the car window or leave it under a park seat there is need for a clean-up day.
There are however reasons to be optimistic, including the Baird Government’s decision to introduce a deposit scheme for bottles which will put monetary value on recycled containers.
But there is also a need to revamp the message and perhaps the format of a day which Australia has supported for 25 years and exported around the world.
Our environment cannot afford to have many more clean up days like Sunday’s.