Letters: Rubbish around city a shock for students

We are two Year 6 students who are writing to complain about the amount of rubbish all over Whanganui.

Rubbish around city a shock for students
We are two Year 6 students who are writing to complain about the amount of rubbish all over Whanganui. Our class went to Springvale Park as part of Clean New Zealand Week. We picked up a huge amount of rubbish. Our rubbish bags were overflowing.

We are so angry at the amount of rubbish we found. It was disgusting but we were generous and cleaned up the Springvale area for our community. Luckily we were wearing gloves. We felt sick and disappointed. It was so bad. How would the rubbish feel. If they were alive they would feel abandoned. They want to be with their rubbish friends in bins and at the dump.

There was puke in a bottle and a boat engine behind a bush.

There was so much stuff we could not take it all away. We suggest the Whanganui Council put more rubbish bins around the park. That would help towards keeping rubbish off the streets. Another idea is we put security cameras around the park to catch the people doing it. That will tell who committed the crime.

We found this rubbish on the streets around Springvale Park, at the BMX track, the Springvale field and around the Splash Centre. If we don't clean up the rubbish around where we live and work more animals and plants will die and it is causing the ozone layer to break!

We suggest that you help us clean up Whanganui streets and parks because Wanganui is in the final of New Zealand's most beautiful city awards 2019.
Visitors that come to our city - please don't litter and mess our town up. Put your rubbish in the bins. Whanganui community, don't be lazy anymore, please keep our city rubbish free. Clean up your rubbish.
CALEB AND CODY
Carlton School

Your letters

Future honesty
Greta Thunberg has done no more than draw attention to what every high school biology student in NZ has been taught since the 1960s (populations with no predators grow exponentially faster until resources are all consumed, then their numbers crash suddenly), and also to what the Club of Rome made very clear in 1971 (our human population will crash in the mid-2030s unless we practice birth control and consume less).

But our population numbers and toxic waste output have kept increasing, setting up many New Zealand children for a mental health crisis, seeing us adults as child abusers who are living in great comfort off the agriculture, tourism and industry creating excessive amounts of CO2, CH4, NOx and SF6 gases.

If we tell them the truth, "Yes, our consumer society waste products are already creating ecological and social collapse in other countries" then they will say, "What's the point of study, of working, indeed what's the point of living?" and they will act accordingly.

And if parents, teachers and politicians tell them "No, no, don't worry, everything will be fine. Behave yourselves, study hard, qualify for jobs in agriculture, tourism and industry to earn export dollars that will pay taxes to support your elders' comfortable retirement," we are basically grooming them to provide for our own selfish needs while destroying their lives.

The good news is that New Zealand's trees are absorbing 20 million tonnes of the 80 million tonnes of greenhouse gases we produce annually. If we can immediately halve the number of our farm animals, halve the number of tourist flights, limit sales of petrol and diesel to half the usual amount, set about planting 40 million trees every year, and can persuade Australia and the USA to follow suit, we can truthfully tell our youngsters "No, no, don't worry; everything will be fine."
JOHN ARCHER
Ohakune

Award contender
One of the nominations for Whanganui sport person of the year should be that lass who scored the most football goals in her competition. And her right-back for her running.
TIM EVANS
Whanganui East

+++

The Chronicle welcomes letters from readers. Please note the following:
Letters should be kept to 350 words and must not be abusive.
Include your name, address and daytime phone number - for verification purposes, not for publication. Noms de plume are not accepted.
The editor reserves the right to edit, amend or reject any letter.
The views expressed are not those of the Chronicle or its staff.
Letters may be published in other NZME publications.

Send your letters by email to; letters@whanganui chronicle.co.nz or mail them to: Editor, Whanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, Whanganui 4500.