As it’s Keep Britain Tidy week, I wanted to explore a little of the history of our relationship with refuse and how our attitudes and practices towards waste have changed over the years, shining a spotlight on Torquay in particular.
Now, rubbish isn’t a new thing by any means; as long as there have been humans there has been human refuse. First and foremost, there’s our biological waste… which is significant.
The average human produces 145 kilograms of poo (approximately a grown pandas worth) and 135 gallons of pee (two bathtubs full) per annum, so as you’d imagine, an efficient sewage system quickly became a necessity for our ancestors. Neolithic people dug shallow ditches to channel their waste away from their villages more than 12,000 years ago and by the time of the Roman Empire, underground sewers developed by the Etruscans became the template for cities across the world.
Yet humans produce more than just biological waste and bringing us straight up to the present we now produce staggering amount of rubbish as a society. This rubbish is taken away from us by various governmental or private firms; some (although not enough) is recycled, most ends in landfill and some is burned in specialised stations. This was not always so.
As a guide at Kents Cavern, more than 15 years ago, I was on the crew helping to clear the woodland area around and to the side of the caves. The woodland trail was created to give a bit more value to the average cave visit and includes displays and replicas of the beasts that once roamed Ilsham Valley.
The area was professionally prepared; several trees were taken down and a circular, levelled path was cut throughout. Kents Cavern staff then headed in to tidy up. We quickly discovered that beneath the leaf-litter, ivy and soil there lurked a rather unpleasant surprise: years and years of trade waste and litter from the Caves!
See, when the caves came into the ownership of Francis Powe in 1903, there were no regular bin collections in Torbay and in fact, even up to the 1970s, local businesses had to manage much of their own waste. The most cost-effective solution that that time was incineration and at the top of the woodlands there is a kiosk (and a Cave Bear – it’s not easy to miss), this was the site of the incinerator, everything that could burn was burnt – sink a spade into the earth here and you will reveal layer upon layer of ash-streaked soil, striations of red earth, black, white and grey, like a slice of particularly unappealing Walls Vienetta.
What could not be incinerated was dumped, over time this formed the very basis of the wood itself and so under every patch of soil hid forgotten discarded relics of the past. There were broken bits of Kents Cavern pottery, cans of popular soft drinks (including Quatro, hands down one of the best carbonated beverages of all time), bent clothes hangers, a few horse and cow bones (one of which is still used today in the Stone Age Trail display) and innumerable crisp packets, glass bottles and plastics.
It quickly became obvious that the further we dug the more we would find and so the executive decision was made to just stop digging – we covered up what we could and left nature to swallow our shameful secret refuse. To be fair she’s done a pretty amazing job. The woodlands look great today and when I’m taking school groups round watching them excitedly track down all the stations on the Stone Age Trail it is very easy to forget that this once was just a secluded space to dump rubbish in.
Back for its seventh year, the 2022 Great British Spring Clean takes place 25 March – 10 April. This year the message is simple. Join the #BigBagChallenge and pledge to pick up as much litter as you can during the campaign.