Innocently killing our wildlife

Innocently discarded by most and couldn't care less by some; string, rope, wire and line kill wildlife!

This picture is typical of the sort found on rocks after high tide




and at landfill and dump sights too... it kind of reminds me of a moor hen we witnessed struggling and hanging upside down on the lake island all day tethered with anglers broken line. Unfortunately the fishery owner did nothing despite him being aware and it eventually died.

Being a responsible angler, I cut all my waste line into tiny little pieces and take it home to dispose of in the dustbin. Same with any I happen come across in my peg even though it didnt originally belong to me; I still gather it and take it home and the fishery owners should regularly clear islands. Given that some of these lines are not biodegradable it seems the sensible and responsible thing to do.

All well and good anglers doing their part (mostly), but what about all the tons of string, rope, wire and line discarded at landfill by everyone else and industry, would it ever be possible to educate the general public to cut it all up or better still why not have the authorities shred all our garbage into tiny little pieces at facilities instead of taking it straight to landfill where it becomes a real hazard?

Over to you...

Well said and well highlighted Chris.

I always either burn or cut into tiny pieces the waste line (and often others waste line!) which I take home after a session with the thought of what happens to it when it's binned and gone to landfill.

Well done for thinking the next step out, I wouldn't have expected anything less from you to be honest.

Use one of these Monomaster devices.



You can keep months' worth of old nylon in it and then chop it up small or burn it all in one go a couple of times a year. I've used them for years now. Brilliant idea.

Rich'

Thanks Steve, you know what? I posted the above without much thought; shredding would obviously be quite impracticable and costly and there would be no net gain from pulverising waste that may end up being ingested or more easily enter the water table..

Shredding on a huge scale is never going to happen but incineration might?

Landfill sites pose many hazards and lets face it, all were doing is sweeping away our waste under the carpet putting wildlife at risk and creating greenhouse gasses.
Ive just read that only about 10% of solid waste is incinerated (no doubt some is recycled and used for new material feed stock) but for the most part its discarded. By comparison, the European average is 17.3 percent, and Denmark incinerates 56 percent of its municipal waste.

Energy obtained from incineration can be used for local heating and power, typically 500kWh of electricity can be generated from one tonne of waste (20 to 22 percent efficient), although if a CHP system is also incorporated and the thermal energy is utilised then combined efficiencies of up to 85 percent are possible.

Incineration can also help reduce the reliance on other energy sources such as fossil fuels or nuclear. For Example in Sheffield an Energy from Waste facility has been built to deal with their residual municipal solid waste. The facility meets its own energy requirements and it also produces up to 21MW of electricity to export to the national grid and up to 60MW of heat which is used to supply heat and hot water to a significant part of the city centre (ice 2006).

During the combustion process the volume and weight of the waste is reduced and transformed into various hot gases. Prior to any of these gases being emitted to atmosphere they are treated through numerous forms of emission reduction technologies, which result in an ash which can then go for further treatment or disposal. Energy is also produced from this process, which can be used for district heating and electricity generation. Where both electricity and heat are utilised from an incineration plant it may be termed a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant.

source: The Landfill Directive.

What does everyone else think, should we install more incineration facilities and reduce the risk and hazards of landfill in the UK?

...and for consumers playing our small part - your fishing line, nylon washing lines, rope and wire and anything else that entangles wildlife, what to do with it in the meantime...

---------- Post added at 08:42 ---------- Previous post was at 08:37 ----------

Sunkistbob-SKB said:

Use one of these Monomaster devices.

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I owe it to myself to get one of those, brilliant suggestion thanks.
Is there a model that chops it up for you as you wind it in?

I've not seen one with blades in. When you take it apart you just cut down the length of what looks like a little brush inside it and all the bits of mono fall out. I usually put them in a dying BBQ to shrivel up! The first one I got was at a fundraiser for the England Youth Fly Fishing Team and have bought several over the years for myself and others. They're not expensive considering the suffering they save.


Sent from my iPad

I take a plastic supermarket bag with me each tiem I go fishing - empty tins, fishing line, any food or drink bottles and into the bin when I get home

I have spent many many hours studying wildlife on both domestic and biohazard landfill sites, and during all that time I have only ever seen one (1) bird tangled in man-made refuse, that being a Black-headed Gull with audio tape tangled onto one leg.

I have only seen one (1) bird, a Great Northern Diver tangled in discarded commercial fishing net, the net being so old it easily broke off when the bird was captured.
I have seen two Codling tangled in the soft plastic frame used to secure four and six pack cans (as depicted in the film 'Happy Feet).

I have seen dozens and dozens and dozens of birds, ranging in size from Swans to Robins, tangled in mono fishing line and two birds (sea shorebirds) tangled in braided line.

The lowest cost rubbish container has to be the small clear supermarket fruit/veg poly bag, freely available, easily stowed, and low cost, and what I use all the time......even for other anglers rubbish!



The fishery owner mentioned in the first post should have been reported to the relevant authorities for his lack of response and to the RSPCA for immediate action.
That said, I suppose it was hard for the angler concerned to compromise a days (or future) fishing inorder to save a simple bird from a such a slow and painful end to its life.





......"Let not selfish men and greedy interests rape our rivers of their natural riches and beauty".......

I think I read somewhere that all our landfill sites will be full in 10 or fifteen years. And there's not room or plans for more. The cost of incineration plants puts councils off acquiring them but, incineration has always been the only sensible way to dispose of waste in my opinion.
Once saw a program "money for old rope"-a bloke picked up several discarded bits of rope on the beach' tied them together and sold it on E Bay. Got £15 for it. A farmer wanted some rope to tie round his tractor/tarpaulin. Shame we couldn't do that with our line. Or could we, save it all up for a year and then send it to a line recycling plant. ?

Here's a thought - 2 million anglers discard 10 yds of a line a year=20,000,000yds=200,000*100 spools of line at £1 a pop =£200,000 or at £2 a pop = £400,000. Could be a little business in it somewhere.

laguna said:

I owe it to myself to get one of those, brilliant suggestion thanks. Is there a model that chops it up for you as you wind it in?

Click to expand...

Not that I have seen but I've used the ordinary version for years now ,I have 2 of them, one on my fly fishing waistcoat and the other in my match box.

Longer pieces of mono I find it easier to just loop them around my hand then cut into two and put in my rubbish bag that I always carry when fishing. At home the short lengths of mono are burned.

Whether it's a length of line left by an angler or a sweet wrapper discarded by a child we've got a serious problem with litter in this country.
There's a playing field near me that lets grown-ups play football at the weekend.
By Sunday evening there's 50-60 empty plastic bottles left lying around for SOMEONE ELSE to dispose of.
FFS
Rant over.

In years to come as population expands and resources dwindle it will become commercial viable to mine our landfill sites for the metals and plastics we have buried.

The story about the plastic bottles is a classic and typical of urban life. It is this attitude which sees people leaving plastic bags full of rubbish on riverbanks or tied in bushes for the 'bloke' to clean up.

Line is a nightmare and I often think about the miles of it which is tangled around various snags on our rivers and lakes, unseen and out of mind it is as much of a hazard as the baited hook left hanging in a bush.

Titus said:

In years to come as population expands and resources dwindle it will become commercial viable to mine our landfill sites for the metals and plastics we have buried.

The story about the plastic bottles is a classic and typical of urban life. It is this attitude which sees people leaving plastic bags full of rubbish on riverbanks or tied in bushes for the 'bloke' to clean up.

Line is a nightmare and I often think about the miles of it which is tangled around various snags on our rivers and lakes, unseen and out of mind it is as much of a hazard as the baited hook left hanging in a bush.

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but at least if this happens on comemrcials it's better than empty tins, plastic bottles and ground bait bags just left on the ground

Peter Jacobs said:

Not that I have seen but I've used the ordinary version for years now ,I have 2 of them, one on my fly fishing waistcoat and the other in my match box.

Longer pieces of mono I find it easier to just loop them around my hand then cut into two and put in my rubbish bag that I always carry when fishing. At home the short lengths of mono are burned.

Click to expand...

Thank you Peter.

Titus said:

In years to come as population expands and resources dwindle it will become commercial viable to mine our landfill sites for the metals and plastics we have buried.

The story about the plastic bottles is a classic and typical of urban life. It is this attitude which sees people leaving plastic bags full of rubbish on riverbanks or tied in bushes for the 'bloke' to clean up.

Line is a nightmare and I often think about the miles of it which is tangled around various snags on our rivers and lakes, unseen and out of mind it is as much of a hazard as the baited hook left hanging in a bush.

Click to expand...

As we have always done for curiosity and relics (archaeological sites), agree though salvage, reclamation and scavenging will be big business one day... my son cant walk past a skip, cash-converters is his first port of call en-route to our house! mg:

My daughter in law works for a firm that manages all the household waste for a large English county, and they create 1 tonne combustible blocks from the waste that can then be used to fire power stations. The EU regulations prevent these being burnt in the UK so they are sold to Germany for their power stations.

sagalout said:

My daughter in law works for a firm that manages all the household waste for a large English county, and they create 1 tonne combustible blocks from the waste that can then be used to fire power stations. The EU regulations prevent these being burnt in the UK so they are sold to Germany for their power stations.

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I assume from this that the German power stations are able to burn stuff more effectively and with less pollution resulting? It's making me think twice about melting my snipped up mono in the BBQ!

I have no idea, but it sounds a reasonable assumption.

mick b said:

The fishery owner mentioned in the first post should have been reported to the relevant authorities for his lack of response and to the RSPCA for immediate action. That said, I suppose it was hard for the angler concerned to compromise a days (or future) fishing inorder to save a simple bird from a such a slow and painful end to its life.

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I spoke to the farmer who owned the lake and he said he would ask his kids to get the boat when they returned from school. 3 days later we fished the same lake and the bird was still hanging there dead. Ironically the boat wasnt on that particular lake that day otherwise I would have freed it myself, it was a nightmare seeing that bird suffer in front of us all day but we did what we could at the time, obviously being a cold day in February it wasnt wise for anyone to wade out in the water.

When I need to discard some line I simply wrap it around my fingers so I have a loop of line around my fingers....get my scissors and cut through the loop leaving several lengths of line and holding it tight I then chop it in very small pieces no bigger than a mans whiskers.....and then I let the wind take it.

No possible danger there for wildlife and it takes literally 30 seconds...at the most.

I have freed several birds from certain death by climbing trees and untangling them...again, usually by a pair of scissors. If a guy has got caught in a tree whilst casting....it can be difficult for that guy to retrieve the line...especially if he is an invalid or simply too inactive to do it.....that is always a problem to our wildlife even with the best of intentions from the bloke who caused the problem.......we have all done it.

Maverick