Beeslack Woods Litter Pick

Saturday 18th April Meet in BHS car park 9am. Would love to see as many residents as possible

Sent this off today to the Advertiser.

Keep Scotland Beautiful- National Spring Clean 2009

I would like to thank the volunteers who turned out on Saturday morning to help clean up the litter in the Beeslack Woods Penicuik.

Midlothian Council kindly provided a 20 yard skip to deposit the rubbish and we (almost) filled it.

The event was well publicised with a piece in the Advertiser, the local Town Crier and both Radio Forth and Black Diamond FM mentioned the event. There was a leaflet drop in Mauricewood, Greenlaw Mains 1 and 2. (I reckon about 600 houses) and there was a big banner placed on the railings at Beeslack High School. No excuse.

Guess how many volunteers turned up? 20 !! Out of a population in excess of 25,000 Ask yourself, how much do you care about your Community? I wish I had £1 for everyone who has stopped me in the street to say " You are doing a great job Chris, organising these events, it's a disgrace the amount of litter about Penicuik. Sorry I couldn't make it..................but......."

I don't want to hear that.......... I would rather have bums on seats........... or rather bums off seats!

I would also say to the residents of Ladywood, look at your neighbours, look at the items that are thrown over the fence into the woods. I know who is doing it ( the same names keep cropping up) But you, as residents, need to contact the Council to make a case against the offenders. The more evidence, the more chance that the fly tipping will stop and the perpetrators are caught and dealt with. I am keeping an eye on who I think it is. I hope you are as well!

Saturday 25th April , there is another Community Litter Pick at Glencorse ( meet at 9am). Do you want to live in a nice clean Community..... or a hovel. Be there or be square!

Chris Leavy
12 Muirhead Place
Penicuik
EH26 0LE

Chris. I appreciate that you must have put a great deal of effort into organising the cleanup. However, I think you underestimate the difficulty in persuading the community that they should drop everything they are doing to put things right. People are working 5 days a week and then they are expected to get up for a 9 o'clock start on a Saturday morning to pick up rubbish that other members of the community have disposed of with no thought of the consequences of there actions. You were also lucky with the weather today. If it had been raining it might have been quite a different story.

As you know there are three ways to resolve the problem. Either the council do it, volunteers or people with community service orders help out. At the end of the day the people that made the effort did make a difference.

By the way did they manage to move the heavy lump of iron that I found to the skip? I also filled a few sacks wiith quite a few empty cans. Did they end up as landfill?

Yes Andy, we managed to get it up the banking. Aparently it had brass parts and is worth a wee bit of money. One of the CSO guys reckoned he could get rid of it and earn himself a few bob!!

Believe me Andy, I have been here before with the same old problem of Community apathy. I find it hard to believe that 24,980 peoplecouldn't give up even an hour and they had other things planned.

The only solution is US as a Community! Using the CSO clients only makes a small dent. Of course, if people didn't drop it in the first place we wouldn't have the problem.

On another matter, do you think we could drum up support to tackle the problem at the bridge? I can arrange for at least one team of CSO's in say 3 weeks time. We really need to get the residents of GM1 and 2 to get involved. Hopefully there will be a better turn out next Saturday and people will see what a fun and rewarding to make our lives better.

It did cross my mind that it could be worth something. However, if someone makes something from it good and well. At least it is no longer messing up the landscape.

I had a look at the area near the bridge tonight and although there is a bit of a mess, it is spread out. I would think that it would not take too long to do and the rubbish might only fill a couple of bags or so.

Seem's to me it doesn't matter how much advertising get done for litter pick up's, the only ones who continually turn up are those who actually care about the environment they live in. Yes, it's hard to get up on a Saturday morning after working hard all week and do a bit for our community - I'm lucky - a nice man in a digger started pulling up the pavement outside my house for gas mains at 8.00. At least he waited til 8, usually they start at 7.45 during the week!! Anyway, Penicuik certainly has it's fair share of people happy to let the minority fix their community for them. It's like the Parkhead Lodge thing - not in my back yard, a few said the other night. Why should I bother if a bunch of do-gooders will do it for me? We should start piling all the rubbish collected in one big pyre so people actually see what & the almount of c*** that gets dumped in our community, by people with no social conscience. Interestingly, I was shocked by the number of polystyrene chippy style containers in Beeslack woods- I wonder if we can talk to local traders and talk them into using something at least bio degradable? The current eco policy in primary schools will be a help to start the education of generations to follow, we will still need to keep up the good work for a few years to come - until the current litter dropper's & fly tippers get the message.

"until the current litter dropper's & fly tippers get the message"
That could be one of the problems, people may happily help with a clean up but not if a week down the line the woods are yet again littered with rubbish again - Why bother comes to mind!
(yes I know why people should bother, I'm just commenting!!)

Yesterday one of my elderly neighbours pointed out that somebody had dumped 3 boxes of lager bottles on the landscaped area just outside our estate . I went down and collected a full carrier bag of them and I think another neighbour must have cleared up the rest. With kerbside collection, facilities at supermarkets or even the council tip why did they have to dump them where they did?

The dumping of these bottles was reported twice to dumb dumpers so think perhaps the council must have collected the rest. Interesting that it was just across the road from Parkhead Lodge.....

Yes interesting................ but the opening of the Lodge doesn't account for the rubbish that we recently collected from the GM2 area. So let's not jump to conclusions!!

happycamper wrote:

The dumping of these bottles was reported twice to dumb dumpers so think perhaps the council must have collected the rest. Interesting that it was just across the road from Parkhead Lodge.....

Noticed the rubbish and wondered how long it would take someone to blame the lodge. Have they actually moved in yet. Even crossed my mind it was put there so they would get the blame.

bumble wrote:

Noticed the rubbish and wondered how long it would take someone to blame the lodge. Have they actually moved in yet. Even crossed my mind it was put there so they would get the blame.

It would not surprise me if the rubbish was dumped there just for that reason! As far as I know, no one has moved in to Parkhead Lodge yet as they still have to obtain an HMO license for the place. I am sure we will all know when it does open as Monty will be getting his photo taken again.

HMO licence for Parkhead Lodge was approved by Midlothian Council yesterday...

The self contained flats are now occupied - no HMO licence was required for this. The first occupants moved in 2 weeks ago. The HMO licence was granted yesterday for the bedsits in the original house with conditions.

One of my kids who was talking to the caretaker the other day told me that the occupants of the flats are two girls and a boy and it seems they are very pleasant. I suspect I may have seen them when they arrived, getting off the bus. They had cases and one of them thanked the driver when they alighted.