Two things today made me as angry as I’ve been in a long time but also thankful. Only yesterday evening I met with some board members from Caerleon AFC who are utterly committed to improving the ground and establishing a high level of football in a community facing club. It’s exciting but hard work for the group.

This morning I started the day cleaning up what can only be described as a shocking scene at Caerleon  AFC.
Increasingly litter is becoming a daily nightmare the club have to deal with. Later in the morning we met up with the Celtic Manor to discuss fly tipping around the borders of their resort ( especially Bullmore Road) by what appears to be local individuals and companies. The scenes there are equally shocking.

In 2008 Pixar released one of the greatest films of the 21st Century Wall-E. Its an animated story set In the 29th century<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/29th_century>, Earth has become a garbage-strewn wasteland due to rampant consumerism and corporate greed; seven centuries earlier.

I now look back at the film not as a children’s animation but as a documentary and warning to our own  generation. If people continue to litter our streets and parks with utter contempt then we will be consumed and our beautiful Earth will become a wasteland. Even locally with daily events in our green spaces ( Afon Llwyd- Caerleon AFC and Bullmore Rd especially) we are already in a dire place.

The sadness of the situation for me is that despite the great hope brought by the likes of Greta Thunberg that our younger population get it- many clearly don’t. But it’s not just the youngsters- those fly tipping are adults and they know exactly what they are doing.

If you do get a chance watch Wall-E with your children ( whatever their ages) and talk to them about litter. Get them to tidy up after themselves and tell them not to smash glass on sports facilities and or start fires. Sounds obvious but this is what the community is dealing with daily. If it wasn’t for the likes of Pitch In Patrol ( join them on Facebook for updates) and other individuals locally we’d be knee deep by now.

We will do our bit as a council. via enforcement, more bins and education but somewhere in that journey those that fly tip or drop litter or smash glasses or start fires have to also take responsibility before it’s too late or before we have a major incident. I’m thankful that our community also has many groups and individuals who do care and who are active giving up their spare time to clean up other peoples mess and make our town better and cleaner because without them litter would very quickly turn our environment into a garbage- strewn wasteland…..