COMMENT: Saving the planet starts on your own doorstep

It’s a bank holiday weekend, and, as ever, we look forward to free time in the sunshine with family and friends – maybe a picnic, or if the mood takes us, a barbecue on Southsea Common. What could be better?

When the time comes to move on, will you just up and leave, oblivious of the rubbish you are leaving behind? The barbecue trays, the discarded chicken bones and burger buns, the drinks bottles and the cake wrappers?

Most of us, you might think, would never contemplate such an anti-social act, spoiling the environment for everybody and expecting others to clear up after us.

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And yet, that is exactly what tends to happen at Southsea Common on bank holiday weekends.

Come Sunday evening, the green sward is littered with the detritus that summertime revellers have left behind.

It’s all too easy to blame day trippers or out-of-towners for the mess, but surely we all have to take responsibility for our own actions?

Seemingly the world is on the brink of an ecological disaster, with rising pollution – particularly plastic, putting marine life under threat.

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So just who are the people who seem to think none of this matters, and that they can just make as much mess as they like and everybody else will just have to put up with it?

This weekend a team of wardens will be on patrol in Southsea to challenge those who abandon their rubbish rather than disposing of it or taking it home.

They will even provide a rubbish bag for people who have come unprepared or who are too lazy or ignorant to find a bin.

It seems incredible that people need this helping hand, but so it seems.

We all have to play our part in cleaning up the planet – and that begins with cleaning up after ourselves.

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