AS I raced across the sand dunes, arms flailing, hair plastered to my face by the howling wind and driving rain and while shrieking at the cardboard boxes that had just blown out of my hands to ‘stop right there!’, for a brief moment I was worried someone might see me.
Then I was more concerned that they may see me if I didn’t pick up the rubbish that I’d inadvertently deposited around one of Jersey’s prettiest beauty spots.
Worse still, I thought with horror, isn’t this area protected or something and home to precious creatures that don’t live anywhere else in the whole wide world?
And so it was that I found myself chasing after a soggy cardboard box without a coat just after sunset a few nights ago.
Fast-forward a few days and the front page of this newspaper with its headline ‘14,098 reports of fly-tipping in St Helier’ headline took me straight back to that moment.
And I struggle to understand how all these people have the audacity to chuck their rubbish and unwanted items here there and anywhere.
I’m not the most environmentally conscious person, after all, and I am anything but tidy, but I get that this kind of behaviour is not on.
And it’s one of those situations where I struggle to comprehend quite how it happens.
I’d just assumed, I suppose, that we are all brought up knowing that rubbish goes in the bin, to the extent that it is now just a reflex and not even a conscious choice any more, but clearly not.
Now St Helier Constable Simon Crowcroft and environmental campaigners have called for a crackdown on fly tippers, who it seems are often driving to find a suitable spot to dump their waste anyway.
Mr Crowcroft says that if more people were prosecuted in court rather than being issued with a warning or dealt with at a parish hall inquiry it would send out a message that dumping rubbish illegally is unacceptable.
He even described it as an ‘anti-social and environmentally horrendous thing to do’. Cleaning it up also costs taxpayers’ money.
He’s right, of course, in all the points he makes. And it is time to get tough on the tippers. After all, the fact that no one has been prosecuted in court for fly-tipping for at least 11 years doesn’t send out the best message to those considering chucking their unwanted items in a field.
And things are only going to get worse when commercial waste charges are introduced next year and green waste fees for businesses are trebling from April.
So more needs to be done to catch perpetrators, and those that are found out need to be properly – and publicly – punished.
After all, if people think they can get away with something and nobody will know then they are more likely to do it. They are also likely to become repeat offenders as a result.
CCTV should be placed at known hotspots and local residents enlisted to help keep a look out in a kind of neighbourhood watch scheme.
And just as those caught speeding in the UK can be sent on speed awareness courses, fly-tippers should be sent on ‘being a responsible human being’ courses.
They should be made to carry out unpaid work picking up rubbish and have a delivery of old bits and bobs deposited on their front doorstep every day for a week to see how they like it. And, they should be named and shamed just like other criminals are, after all it’s our community they are messing up, in some cases even polluting.
The rest of us also have a part to play. Just as has happened with those that don’t pick up after their dogs, the public have to be the first line of defence.
We have to keep an eye out for those fly-tipping, take photos, video, record registration numbers and report incidents using the Love Jersey app.
And we should all be encouraging employers to be responsible too in dealing with their waste.
We are lucky to live in a clean, tidy Island – most of the time.
And as a result we have become complacent.
After all, everyone just puts their rubbish in the bin, don’t they? Even if that bin needs to be a really big one at La Collette that you have to drive to.
Well apparently not, and that’s not OK.
