holiday litter

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19864, 11 June 1927, Page 14 (Supplement)

holiday litter

SCENES IN LONDON PARKS

ZOO’S CLEANING DAY. LONDON, May 8. One feature of the Easter holiday, due, nn doubt, to four days of tine weather, was the enormous amount of litter left in the public parks and on the commons in and around London. Some of the park-keepers complained that the amount of debris left by holidaymakers was greater than usual, despite the presence of waste-paper receptacles at various points, and that large numbers of broken bottles had been left about. “It was impossible to see the gras?, so thickly was the ground covered with litter after the crowds had left,” a keeper at the London Zoological Gardens told a Press representative. “In many cases,” ho said, “it was piled up nearly a foot deep. Of course, it was only to be expected with the record crowd that has been here. One day. according to our latest count, 70,637 people paid for admission. And more than five tons of their rubbish—ton times the usual amount for a summer’s day—was removed by fifty men working at high pressure for 41 hours early next morning. Three hundred-weight of broken bottles and glasses were picked up. ” Asked if during the keeper’s twentytwo years at the Zoo he had noticed a change in the conduct of the crowds, he replied, “Yes. The modern crowds are more orderly and respectful of authority. Scarcely any damage is done to the grounds and property here nowadays. Before the war Windows were always being broken, and it was a common occurrence to have to eject drunkards—a thing unheard of in these days. Of all the people who come here none is so tidy as the Londoner. He will always put his wastepaper and rubbish in a wastepaper-basket if one is handy.”