A clean-up to enjoy
FERNDALE – Residents worked hard to clean-up the Ferndale Valley Arboretum.
Chairperson of the Bryanfern Residents Association John Endres writes:
What do a mattress, a G-string and a golf ball have in common? They are all objects found on 28 September in the Ferndale Valley Arboretum.
The arboretum is a beautiful section of riverline bush in the heart of Ferndale. It is a fenced-off, protected area, but gets opened up once a month to give residents the opportunity to go on a short hike along the river.
For the start of spring, the Bryanfern Residents Association had planned to plant some indigenous trees near the Cork Avenue bridge to stabilise the soil and provide some additional shade. But when the day arrived, the necessary planting permissions from the City of Johannesburg – applied for long in advance – hadn’t materialised.
WATCH:
The BFRA therefore decided to change the focus of the event at short notice and do a river clean-up instead. Equipped with bin bags and gloves, Bryanfern residents picked up mountains of litter, returning a bit of the dazzle to nature.
Special Ops 99, a new security company in Bryanfern, turned out in force to support the community. Officers not only kept the residents safe, but also helped collect rubbish and provided two bakkies to take the collected spoils to the rubbish dump.
Clearing litter is like an archaeological expedition. The rubbish tells a story about the people who live in and around the greenbelt. The vast majority of items are plastic shopping bags, often caught up in trees, along with food wrappers and containers. Clearly recycling still has a long way to go before it catches on.
But other items show that criminals use the arboretum as a hiding place and escape route. For example, there were long sections of charred electrical cable, from which the copper had been extracted. There was a long piece of fibre optic cable, clearly of no use to the criminals. There were some items of clothing, some toner cartridges and rusted old mechanical components.
Greenbelts play a vital role in keeping cities healthy. Hopefully, more can be done to keep these natural areas clean and safe, through cooperation between the municipality, residents associations and other community-based organisations such as local security companies.
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