In just two days earlier this month staff from the Island’s biggest potato grower, The Jersey Royal Company, picked up and disposed of 200 bags of litter from the verges of main roads, lanes and hedgerows in several parishes.
William Church, the company’s marketing director, said the discarded items included car parts but largely consisted of glass and plastic bottles and crisp packets thrown from vehicles.
‘The weather has been very much against so many of our operations and the season is running at a delay,’ he said.
‘One of the other downsides to this is that we haven’t always had enough work to keep employees happy. We try to find wet weather jobs to keep people employed doing useful things, but these ran out so we came up with the idea to offer the teams work to go around fields and lanes picking up litter.
‘In the week before the fine weather arrived we sent teams out on two of the wettest days and they collected over 200 bags of rubbish. And this wasn’t all generated by our guys working in fields – an accusation that has been levelled at us in the past – as litter in Jersey is a widespread problem.’
Heavy rainfall and the so-called Beast From the East cold snap has put this year’s Jersey Royal new potato crop a month behind schedule, as farmers across the British Isles are having to wait for fields to dry before planting or letting cattle out from their winter quarters.
Mr Church said the business was inspired to undertake the clean-up by the Island’s regular beach clean initiatives.
He said that the most litter was collected from built-up areas in the countryside.