Please clean up your mess

The number of volunteers and the amount of plastics and other rubbish collected up, much of it discarded fishing nets and ropes, was very heartening – Surfers Against Sewage are to be congratulated.

However, I return to that old problem that has already been covered many times in the past in your pages – doggy-do-do.

The volunteers were asked to avoid all doggy-do-do, bagged and un-bagged, due to its sheer nastiness and the organisers’ difficulty in disposing of it in a large volume (one or two had come prepared and much was removed anyway, but not included in the “official” 250kg collected).

This seems to me an especial problem at Climping, and one that is growing. One cannot understand the mentality of dog-owners who do take the trouble to collect up their pet’s mess, but then dump the bag just anywhere – thrown into hedgerows, left very obviously on walls and groynes, and even tied to fences.

It could be said that it is actually more damaging to do so than to leave it lying un-bagged, as it is likely that foxes and other wildlife will tear the bags open and nature will take its course anyway, but leaving the non-degradable bags to harm even more so over many years.

Dogs tearing plastic bottles to shreds also create another problem – the small pieces are then easily swallowed by birds and animals, usually resulting in their death.

The solution, but only a partial solution, is that no-one should leave anything behind in the countryside or on a beach, and also take away with them something of the sea- and wind-borne rubbish.

John Morris

Maltravers Drive

Littlehampton