Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) Has Waterfall Of Litter Cascading Down Its Slopes!

 

For locals sadly this is no shock! The mountain is filthy and has been filthy for years. Along with the litter will be mountains of human waste and toilet tissue, and also dog waste and filled dog bags! All ending up in our lovely Welsh streams and rivers below the mountain! Fancy a trip up Snowdon. The true scale of the litter blight affecting parts of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) were revealed during a two-day clean-up. More than 2,700 pieces of litter were removed from the mountain including 1,737 single-use items, of which 800 were drinks containers.

Most common brands were Lucozade, Red Bull, Coca Cola and Monster. As well as empty cans, 274 plastic water bottles were collected from one of Wales’ most iconic natural landmarks. As the area had never previously been litter-picked, it's thought some of the rubbish could be 100 years old. The clean-up was carried out by volunteers from the British Mountaineering Council (BMC), with support from Trash Free Trails. Expert climbers abseiled down the Trinity Wall gullies, a popular climbing face below the summit, while walkers cleared the Miner’s Path.The single-most common type of item found were confectionery wrappers (300). Also collected were 25 rucksack covers – and one "misplaced" Santa hat. Despite the monumental efforts of volunteers, the BMC acknowledged that “much more rubbish remains on Yr Wyddfa”.

Tom Carrick, BMC access and conservation officer for Wales, said: “I still believe this is only the start of this work. We’ll look at what we can do differently in the future – and also how we can change our behaviours and attitudes about what we take into the mountains.

“For me, the most staggering realisation was the amount of single use plastic bottles within the gullies. I look forward to working with my colleagues across Eryri to begin to find a solution to encourage the use of reusable bottles on the mountainside.”

Last month’s litter-pick focussed on the Trinity Gullies on Clogwyn Y Garnedd. It’s long been known that “waterfalls” of rubbish have become trapped in this trio of hard-to-reach gullies above Llyn Glaslyn. The site had never litter-picked before as the near-vertical 300-metre gullies were just too treacherous.

An abseiler bags another item of rubbish from the sheer from one of the three Trinity Wall gullies (Image: Jethro Kiernan/BMC)

Litter streams down one of the Trinity Gullies just below the summit of Yr Wyddfa (Image: Jethro Kiernan/BMC)

Single-use products accounted for 63% (1,737) of the items retrieved. Of these, the 809 drinks containers recovered were more common (29.3%) than the 794 snack items found (28.7%).

It’s thought many of the items in the gullies were windblown from the summit. The BMC believes stopping the use of plastic drinks bottles is one of the “simplest” ways of cleaning up the mountain.

Environmental campaigners Trash Free Trails said the presence of so many drinks containers reinforces the need for Deposit Return Scheme (DRS). Such schemes are commonplace in European countries – they operate by requiring a deposit on plastic bottles and aluminium cans that can be reclaimed either in stores or via “reverse vending machines”.

The UK Government had planned to have a DRS in place by 2025 but this has now been delayed until October 2027 to give the industries involved more time to prepare. The charity Keep Britain Tidy estimates the delay will mean 25bn more bottles and cans being littered.

Westminster also wants to drop glass from the scheme as its inclusion would be “problematic” for the drinks industry. Wales is the only Home Nation still opposing this proposal.

The sight that confronted the BMC's volunteer litter pickers (Image: Tom Carrick/BMC)

Alec Young of Eryri National Park said: “Microplastics have been found in every soil sample monitored on the most popular paths up Yr Wyddfa. We see DRS playing a pivotal role in reducing litter on the mountain, and preventing harmful fragmented plastics from entering, and ruining, this fragile environment.”

Dom Ferris, CEO of Trash Free Trails, said a DRS can’t come too soon for places like Yr Wyddfa. “Our research has shown that a fifth of interactions an animal has with an item of single-use pollution will end in death – our volunteers are increasingly finding examples of this occurring when an animal gets trapped inside a bottle or can. “We know from European case studies that a DRS can eradicate a whole category of litter from our trails overnight; why are we allowing beloved hiking spots such as Snowdon to be the alternative to a reverse vending machine?”

The collaborative effort also included Plantlife, Eryri National Park, Cymdeithas Eryri, RAW Adventures, the Baron Hill Estate and Snowdon Mountain Railway. From....https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/waterfalls-garbage-cascade-down-yr-30142190