Residents living along Medway River outraged by increasing plastic pollution

Plastic pollution has gotten much worse over the last couple months in Kent and in Medway especially, says the Southeast Rivers Trust.

Medway is the post polluted part of the county along with 43 of its other areas are more than double the World Health Organisation suggested levels.

Gloria Francalanci, Plastics projects manager at the Southeast Rivers Trust said that over the last few months due to the tide, a concerning amount of plastic and other rubbish has washed up along the Medway Riverbank.

She said: ‘I think we are all in danger, there’s plastic in our food chain, I think every organism on this planet needs to be worried about this, plastic has been found in every single area on the globe. It’s in the air we breathe, it’s in the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean, it’s in ice caps, so we all need to care about it. All you have to do is to look around to see how bad the issue is.’

Residents that live near the river have been affected the most. Terry Sims who has lived in the area for over 30 years said, ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the amount of the amount of rubbish. It’s almost triple what was there last week. I even saw a hoover, a hoover! Who’s dumping that?’

However, Medway isn’t the only area in Kent that has seen an influx of pollution. Laurey Harpum, who lives in Sheppey has even seen the beaches littered with commercial waste. She stated how infuriating it was that fly tipping has become a major problem. She also said that the item she always sees no matter what are ‘those helium balloons ones meant to celebrate a loved one and I understand people have the best of intentions before they set them off, but it makes me angry that they don’t think about where they will end up.’

Belinda Lamb project officer at the Medway Swale Estuary Partnership believes that the solution lies in individual people educating themselves and passing the message along. She said: ‘I don’t think the government should take any more action unless we’re all happy for our taxes to go up a lot more. It cost a lot of money to organise rubbish clean-ups, plus the council really help anyone who wanted to go out and collect rubbish by organising litter collections, providing litter pickers, and bin bags, so I think we all need to take responsibility for our litter.’