What Richmond Park can learn from Central Park (about litter)
Richmond Park (London/Surrey) and Central Park (New York, USA) are among the most most famed urban green spaces in the world. They are both enormous compared with ordinary city parks, and provide an escape from dense urban environments. Yet there were created with very different purposes:
Richmond Park is fundamentally a historic landscape, established in the 17th century, and retains an extraordinary sense of openness and wilderness. Its ancient trees, grasslands, ponds, wildlife, deer, hills and distance views give a character that is difficult to reproduce anywhere else.
Central Park by contrast was deliberately designed in the 19th century as a public urban park. Its designers purposely created lakes, bridges, paths, gardens, lawns, woodland and viewpoints, with careful planning. But it can offer many useful lessons across the pond on how to maintain a litter-free urban space.
The city has also recently banned horse-drawn carriages, after years of campaigning for horse welfare (due to road accidents and welfare concerns).
Keep dogs away from steep banks, mushrooms, conkers, toxic plants/trees and on leads during nesting season. Read up on dog-friendly parks.
Councils can help by not planting toxic plants (all bulbs from daffodils to tulips to azaleas and rhododendrons are not safe). Also don’t plant flowers in railings, as deer who eat flowers can get stuck in them.
When visitors walk through a clean park without litter, they experience the landscape as well-cared for. When rubbish is scattered everywhere (especially when it remains caught in bushes or in rivers), the atmosphere changes. As well as being harmful to dogs and wildlife.
Why is Central Park mostly litter-free?
- Central Park has over 700 patented aluminium trash cans that are designed to not let ‘rubbish fly away in the wind’ like in England’s parks. Staff collect over 1300 tons of trash each year, and with high recycling rates. Electric carts are used to collect 8 tons of trash daily.
- The park is divided into around 50 zones of 10 acres each. Each gardener on his patch is responsible for both litter removal and horticultural upkeep, with signs to discourage visitors from bringing plastic into the park, to stop wildlife injuries or entrapment.
- Litter bins are not situated in the middle of landscapes or high-traffic areas, to minimise rodent access. Local stations process mixed waste immediately to reduce odour and prevent scavenging overnight.
- Volunteers use bagsnaggers (telescopic poles) that remove snagged plastic bags from trees or rivers.
So why is Richmond Park not doing this?
Richmond Park litter has been lethal to some of its famed deer, as many mistake litter for food (some deer have died from eating blue hydration gel dropped by cyclists) and stags have got litter tangled up in their antlers.
A common culprit is the blue disposable face mask. If you see any, ‘pull or snip ear loops’ to avoid tangling wildlife, then put in a secure (closed) bin.
Other hazards are plastic bags, balloons and plastic beer rings and rubber bands (again snip/rip holes before secure disposal).
Although England has strict rules on litter, the fines are hardly ever implemented. Councils are responsible for clearing up litter on public land (no matter who dropped it). So report any you find to Fix My Street. On private land, councils can serve Litter Abatement Orders (if not complied with, they can issue fines or clear the litter and issue invoices to bill landowners).
So if your park is full of litter, it means your council is not doing its job properly, by making use of its powers. Cash-strapped councils could do with the money from fines, so why are they not issuing them to litter louts?
The ‘take your rubbish home’ message
In Cental Park, there are lots of signs telling people to take their rubbish home and why it matters (say to avoid harming local birds and wildlife). There is a lot of research to say that when you place big colourful bins in busy areas (accompanied by such messaging), people use them more.
Much of the litter in Richmond Park is cigarette butts (or discarded vapes). Councils and shops can help by giving away or selling portable ashtrays (which immediately extingish butts so also help to prevent wildfires) and vapes can be recycled at any shop that sells them.
Alternatives to culling deer?
Another controversy in Richmond Park is the culling of the wild deer. The park says that the sale of venison helps fund wildlife officers. And say that contraception could cause stress by rounding up/fencing off deer.
But a Freedom of Information Act found profits are so huge, some suspect this is just a ‘glorified farm’. Deer contraception appears to be working well in the USA (with some caveats). What is important is to leave wild deer alone, to avoid injury (antlers and protective parents). And to avoid parents abandoning their young, if spooked from human visitors getting too near.
