Clean up your act

It's time for the students of Leeds to face the messy truth...

By Ceri Eldin

'Ellie Brown, 16/02/10, All rights reserved'

A visible boundary exists around the renowned student housing area, Hyde Park, one that is made up of empty beer cans and take-away containers, each a stereotypical yet recognisable feature of the student lifestyle. So, this is clearly just stating the obvious, that wherever students go a trail of litter follows. No! As the future of the country the state of the communities we live in is highly symbolic of our treatment of the world, and it is surprising given the constant attention that the educational institutions are giving to being ‘green’ that such a problem exists. Perhaps, the West Yorkshire Council decided to make a few cuts in their litter-picking department and thought that they’d aid students with their ‘grunge’ image by allowing them to live in squalor. Or, rather, it could be the other residents of the area (yes! we haven’t taken over altogether just yet) that are causing all the mess, maybe in some rebellious scheme against us overwhelming youths. To a certain extent both are plausible but lets not exclude the obvious culprits from the situation, that’s us! Smelly and care-free students! 

Each day on entering the Hyde Park periphery from the significantly cleaner Burley the sight of packaging and unwanted foods having been pushed to the sides of the streets, under wire fencing or into the gutter, leaves a disconcerting feeling in the pit of my stomach. This sensation is confused when met with recycling bins and environmental signs on arrival at the University, and then again when browsing the morning paper and are hit with headlines that put the environment at the front of much of today’s world politics. How can we preach about the inanity of gas emissions and protest against deforestation when we cannot resist scattering our waste across the streets of our own community. Don’t get me wrong, no claims are trying to be made here that put litter on an equal level with huge industrial forces but rather I am attempting to make a statement about a flaw in our current attitude.  

It is obvious that this claim gathers students under one umbrella and buys into reputations, for not everyone who lives in Hyde Park is responsible, but the evidence is there, in shiny magpie attracting forms, that highlights the actions of many and this cannot be denied. It’s rather embarrassing that at this stage in the educational system that people need to be reminded of one of the first things they are taught at play-school: littering is bad children! If you no longer feel enough sympathy for the poor little hedgehogs that helped to deter you at the age of seven then maybe you can feel something for the awful environmental position that human beings have put the world in, and do that little bit to illuminate that grand gestures mean so little without the support of smaller efforts, and maybe… I don’t know, just off the top of my head… don’t drop your litter!