Cardiff: beautiful parks, world-class attractions… and an absolute shame

Welcome to Cardiff, a city with a beautiful park in the center, a castle in the center, Welsh cakes fresh from the market, artists and top sports teams in one of the biggest stadiums in the world, a small place for award-winning Spanish people. kitchen, and everything mentioned within two steps of each other. We have a lot to offer the people who live here and those who are only here for the weekend or by plane. But there is a big problem: trash.

I came here as a student and fell in love. Fast forward a decade and a half and I love it so much that I’m raising a family here. I’m fully invested in the city, but its state is an absolute disgrace. I don’t say this lightly nor am I trying to be part of the solution. And I feel entitled to say that, considering I live in a suburb very close to the city center and I just took a year of maternity leave, so I’ve been walking a lot.

Several times a week I walk from the city center to Cardiff Bay. Walking through Taff the sun shines over the river, the greenery of the Greener Grangetown project is in full bloom and should be a great walk with bikes, pedestrians and cars. But on one of the last days of summer, I wrote down on my cell phone a list of the trash I saw on the one-mile walk between my house and daycare: two piles of dog poop, countless bottles floating in the river, a wheelchair, a cover, stroller, potty and swing, chair, tray and wheelchair.

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I made four different reports on the municipality’s C2C application and counted four different red garbage bags (indicating garbage collected by volunteers) waiting to be collected. It was a short walk. The next day was no better, but the wheelchair was moved from the sidewalk to the river bank (and will soon be on the river itself, divided into several parts).

Two years ago, my brother came for Christmas. He lives in another city, so he is not naive to urban life. But as we walked past the scraps of food ripped from the green bags on trash day, he turned to me and said, “God, it’s dirty.” And I looked around and realized how blind I was to it. But instead of sending an angry tweet or writing a few hundred words about it, I used my free time to do something about it. With a very small baby in a carrier on my chest and a toddler in full swing, one Saturday we joined our local trash collection group, filling bag after bag.

A few weeks later I asked a garbage collector I saw on one of my walks where she got her equipment and she told me that I could register with the city hall and collect bags, carriers and collectors at any center. I diligently signed up and became a trash collector with Love Where You Live cards, the coolest membership card a girl could dream of. About three times a week I went out with the baby in the stroller, collecting bottles, cans of Red Bull and vaporizers to fill the red bag. I never had to go more than two or three blocks away from mine.

Some days I would come back from a walk, go out a few hours later and find more of the same: more bottles of Coca-Cola, more packs of cigarettes, more vapes. The situation worsens on weekends, when people leave the city center and on event days. The days of Advent are one of the pearls of our city. I love sports, I love shows, I love that we have a stadium in the city center with world-class events. I hate seeing the mess this creates in my community in the hours before and after.

Nothing embarrasses me more than when my child says “ugh” when we pass piles of trash on the way to work or school. We are encouraged to walk to school, but pass through the trash, avoid messing with dogs and use a condom at least once. For the latest news on Welsh politics, sign up to our newsletter here.

So why is this happening? I would like to know the psychology of trash. There really is no excuse. You have pockets. There are ballot boxes. Use them, use them. Just carry your vape bottle or case a few hundred meters. As a mother of two young children, I am actually a vending machine. My purse and coat pockets are full of snacks that can be ordered at any time, but I can keep the packaging back in my pocket or purse until I get home. It really isn’t difficult.

The City Council also plays its role here. The council asks you to use C2C to report litter via a downloadable app and form to complete and submit on a case-by-case basis. Not only does it depend on you having the technological knowledge to do it, but it also puts the emphasis on those who are trying to improve it rather than those who are causing the problem in the first place.

If you ask people to use this app, you must take action. When I sent a photo of a construction site where the urn was surrounded, impeding its sole purpose in life, I assumed there would be a chuckle from the trash department, a note sent to the builders and the urn. busy intersection, restored. Was not. A few months later, the garbage container disappeared behind the construction site fence, where work will only be completed in the summer of 2025.

It took dozens of reports and messages for anyone to realize that the developers removed the trash container from the main road, under the railroad bridge at the landfill, to connect the dots as to why so much trash is dumped there day after day. after night. The urn was reinstalled, the trash there decreased drastically. I can tell you the hot spots, I don’t need an app. We know that people take out the basket before too long, and I’m not referring to some plate of food prepared without washing, I’m referring to week after week of not taking out the basket correctly, with the result that the bags break and the bags are removed. the trash. rotting outside another day Or stores where cigarettes fill every possible corner and energy drink cans fill the sidewalks.

At the height of my frustration (I’ve been picking up rubbish and reporting missing bins and piles of rubbish via the app and nothing has improved), I contacted my local councilors and wrote them a long email describing how embarrassed I was. in that. get a feel for the city and ask what they are doing to fix things.

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In response to a question, the responsible cabinet member told me that “the city center has more resources than any other area in the entire city… cleaning up all the high traffic areas” and “I can assure you that they are educational measures and law enforcement must be taken.” being taken as needed.”

The reality and the fragment could not be further from the truth. You can’t convince me that the system works when our streets are full of trash, our children still have to walk through dog excrement, broken bottles and smoking paraphernalia every day. On event days I see people leaving hotels, flats and apartments in Graintown or Riverside, leaving the park and taking the bus, leaving the train station en masse. What impression do you have of the supposedly modern capital when you see trash scattered across the streets?

Can we really say we will be taken seriously as a tourist attraction when we can’t even find a way to put more large bins in the park in the summer or on the main streets when 70,000 people fill the Principality Stadium? ? This is not only naive, but also an insult to those who, according to the group of volunteers, threw away 410 bags of rubbish in March, compared to 311 in December. During these months, the number of trash pickers increased, volunteer hours increased, and pink bag fills increased.

Councils are understaffed and underfunded, I know that for sure, but councils have a legal duty (under section 89 of the Environment Act 1990, don’t you know?) to “clear their land of rubbish and waste” . Where is the proactive approach to education? Bin staff collecting rubbish will leave incorrectly delivered bags. They must attach a label explaining that it has been misrepresented. In my area this doesn’t happen, probably due to lack of time, but if you don’t tell people they are doing something wrong, they won’t know.

Where are the councilors who issue fines on the spot, as we saw on Queen Street for cyclists? God knows the council coffers need money. Where are the incoming letters, emails, or Facebook updates to remind us of all the rules we must follow, the exceptions we routinely get wrong?

Now we have a problem that is not only not being solved, but is getting worse. Instead of thinking about how this affects residents who pay council tax, or visitors who contribute to tourism and the economy, and giving their opinion to others who want to do the same, the council thinks there is no problem. Overfilled containers tell a different story.