Two thousand tyres have been recovered after a clean-up operation at a river involving 150 volunteers.
Chief government of charity Keep Wales Tidy, Owen Derbyshire, informed Sky News it was “an unbelievable achievement” to convey so many various individuals collectively on the River Ogmore.
“It does point to a deeper problem I think about our relationship with rivers and the challenge we’ll all be facing in trying to clean them up on a national level.”
Mr Derbyshire mentioned there must be a “step change” in strategy to large-scale litter and waste.
“I don’t think anybody expected to see so many tyres in the river and if you look at it at low-tide, you can see lots of tyres, trollies, fridges, we saw a couple of armchairs right in the middle of the river and the truth is they could have come from any direction.”
This stretch of the river had been a “hotspot” for a variety of years however the scale of the waste was surprising, in line with Mr Derbyshire.
“We couldn’t have imagine that it would be quite so severe and you do have to think about the impact that has, not just on the communities that are forced to live with this, it actually is a beautiful part of the world, but also the nature and wildlife that are harmed because of incidents like these,” he mentioned.
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Mr Derbyshire mentioned it’s suspected the quantity of waste was because of “industrial pollution rather than one-off events”.
But he mentioned the quantity of people that helped clear the river was reassuring. Local resident Alun had been planning the clear 4 years, and introduced the volunteers collectively.
“It was incredibly encouraging to see so many people get together with that positive attitude to try and do their bit to look after the local area, but the truth is it shouldn’t really be on the shoulders of volunteers alone longer term,” he mentioned.
Source: information.sky.com”