Yesterday I cleared a roll of razor wire, also known as NATO wire, that I’d had my eye on for a while out in the woods. Since the roll was lying next to a country road, and we apparently had NATO maneuvers here quite often in the ’60s and ’70s, I suspect it’s a leftover from those days.

In any case, that stuff's a real nightmare. Luckily, the roll was light enough that I could carry it, but once I got home, I still cut it up with bolt cutters because it was so bulky and really hard to handle.

As promised, here’s a second round at the old dump site from last time.

Looks like I found a former “plastic friend” here. ::: spoiler potentially NSFW

:::

To go with it, a long-expired condom in its original packaging. ::: spoiler potentially NSFW

:::

In general, it’s always amazing what people feel the need to dispose of in nature. Given that I’ve also found a vibrator and a Fleshlight while picking up trash, there might be a pattern here: Perhaps people are embarrassed to throw these things away themselves, so they’d rather toss them into the nearest bushes.

geteilt von: https://empuriabrava-newsletter.com/ap/posts/1063/lemmy

[email protected] Divers and volunteers have pulled 280 kg of waste from the seabed at Port de Roses during the port's annual underwater clean-up. Alongside the usual harbour litter of plastics, glass, tyres, ropes and fishing gear, they brought up some stranger finds: a toilet, a set of chairs, fencing and an awning. As in previous years, cans and glass bottles turned up in large numbers.

This year's work focused on the harbour mouth, between the counter-pier of the marina and the fishermen's quay, a stretch busy with both leisure boats and the local fishing fleet. A second team worked along the rocky part of the breakwater, where litter carried in by the sea tends to get trapped between the rocks.

The mix of objects suggests the waste has more than one source. Ropes and fishing equipment point to activity on the water, while furniture, fencing and an awning look more like things lost or dumped from land or from boats. The port did not say how the 280 kg splits by material.

Port de Roses presents the clean-up as part of a broader environmental commitment that has earned it several labels: Biosphere for sustainable tourism, the Blue Flag, the EU's EMAS eco-management scheme and the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism in protected areas. The day is also meant to raise awareness among boat owners, port users and residents. The organisers stress that keeping the sea clean is a shared job for administrations, professionals, users and visitors alike.

That raises a fair question. If cans and bottles show up every single year, is the awareness message actually working? Publishing a breakdown by material and comparing it with earlier editions would make that measurable. Other marinas around the Bay of Roses, including the canals of Empuriabrava, could take the model further by publishing figures of their own.

https://empuriabrava-newsletter.com/2026/10/01/port-de-roses-seabed-clean-up-removes-280-kg-of-waste/

#MarinaAndBoating #BeachesAndNature #CostaBrava

A trash dump I’ve been working on off and on since this spring: After the new bypass was built, the old country road apparently remained passable as a dead-end for a while. Unfortunately, that seems to have prompted some people (or maybe always the same ones?) to dump their trash here on the embankment. Alongside a veritable graveyard of shoes (at least 30 pairs, mostly children’s and baby shoes), there’s construction debris and household trash.

Further along the embankment, it looks like someone once tried to set up a tent… whether it was a homeless person or children playing is hard to say.

Well, here are a few of the most interesting finds I’ve come across:

The shoe and the saw were lying next to the tent ruins. While the shoe suggests it belonged to an adult, the saw strikes me as something children might have taken from their workshop at home.

For a change, here's a nice find: the sulfur polypore, also known as “chicken of the woods.” It's actually a good edible mushroom whose flesh has a texture very similar to chicken breast (even if it's just as bland). But I don't usually pick mushrooms along roadsides or at landfills ;)

A creepy, half-buried child's doll...

...which doesn't look much better once it's been dug up.

It's also available with a stylish moss hairstyle.

That's it for today, but I'm not done there yet—maybe I'll post again.

A big after-work cleanup along the hedge by a country road.

The usual mix of bottles, plastic wrap, and roadside trash... and a chemical toilet from a RV—however it ended up there.

I also wanted to share my latest acquisition with you: I bought a grape tub (the big, green, portable tub on the left in the picture)!

I’ve made it a point to pick up trash in places where no one else does (such as hedges, steep embankments, etc.). The problem is that when using individual buckets, the walk back from those spots is always quite long and arduous. To increase my trash-collection capacity, I therefore bought this portable hard-plastic tub as a transport container—it was actually designed specifically to carry sticky, heavy grapes down steep slopes.

I tested it out: I can fill the tub with about 2 x 25 liters of trash and still carry it comfortably. Combined with my two buckets, that would be about 100 liters of trash that I can carry to the car—and thus to the disposal site—all at once. Definitely a useful solution!

Maybe I’ll write another post sometime about what I consider to be the ideal gear for picking up trash.

A walk after work through a hedge I haven’t crawled through yet.

Some animal lover seems to have the crazy habit of buying lots of treats for his rabbits and cat but not giving a damn about wildlife habitats by tossing his trash into nature. There were definitely 15 plastic bags torn to shreds by mice, containing more or less rotted small-animal bedding, as well as several trash bags filled with cat food cans, treat wrappers, and similar junk.

The thick strands of insulation presumably came from a cable theft many years ago and were subsequently dumped in the hedge by the metal thieves.

Worth noting: a still vacuum-sealed can of cat food, as well as one sealed bottle each of egg liqueur and soy sauce.

It turned out to be more work than I expected, and it was a pain in the ass to fiddle with that hedge (some bushes had already grown through it in places).

Luckily, the recycling center accepts that stuff as scrap metal.

Another quick underwater tour of the swimming lake. As always, lots of bottles and unidentifiable plastic pieces.

Fun fact: As the evening went on, I gradually found an old snorkeling set while snorkeling... the only thing missing is a second fin ;D

There’s also an old bicycle lying there, but retrieving it is currently beyond my capabilities ^^'

A quick walk around the swimming lake just around the corner after work. Underwater: Not much—a cup, a few fishing lures and hooks, and something that looks like it used to be a broken candy machine (how did something like that end up in a swimming lake?).

Interesting: Invasive zebra mussels have settled on the vending machine.

Above water: The usual assortment of litter from recreational activities.

Highlights here: A keychain (someone at the nearby sailing club probably got in trouble over this at some point, but it’s been lying there for a while and is rusted) and a geocache (I wouldn’t normally pick one up, but the note was already torn up and it was lying in a pile of trash that had washed ashore)

The little joys of a detrashers's daily life: bottle deposits.

Okay, let's not kid ourselves: Given the cost-benefit ratio, there's really no question of it being “worth it.” Still, it's always nice to see that DeTrashing funds at least one new trash picker every few months.

A quick litter cleanup along a country road on Sunday. I’d been there once before a year ago and wanted to find out if it was “worth it” or how quickly new trash shows up: Fortunately, I had to walk a long way to fill my bucket, so it’s clearly possible to collect trash faster than some litterbugs can throw it away.

Fun fact: Some drunk is apparently trying to hit the speed camera on the side of the road with his liquor bottles while driving. At least half a dozen relatively new bottles are lying around in the area.

Also going for a trash walk after Halloween is a great way to find all the errant wrappers

Next step is to figure out how to secure it to my belt or the bucket I use!

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/9407848

More than 480,000 items of litter removed from UK beaches in nationwide survey

More than 480,000 items of litter were removed from UK beaches in 2023 as part of a nationwide survey.

In the Marine Conservation Society’s (MCS) annual beach clean, 14,721 volunteers picked up rubbish from their local beaches and recorded the number of items found within a 100m stretch.

Publishing its annual State of our Beaches report on Wednesday, the charity said half of all litter collected came from public sources – either dumped, blown or washed on to beaches.