Taking In The Trash

We’re a classy bunch, and no mistake…

f you’re wondering just how busy Greystones can get these sunny, lockdown days, take a quick stroll in Burnaby Park or along the seafront.

There you’ll soon realise that there are quite a few Greystonians who don’t know how to wipe their own asphalt. 

It’s a national problem, of course, with rubbish scattered across beauty spots from Salthill to Sandymount, and we’ve had plenty of emails into GG HQ about the Kilcoole to Greystones coastline trek being littered with, well, litter.

So, it’s heartening to see a new generation with a new attitude, as students from Greystones Community College went out in force to help tidy up this town.

And pick up after feckwits who are clearly far too weak-willed to carry an empty pizza box home.

The weekend work was all down to the GCC’s Green Schools Leadership Team, whose battle cry is ‘working together for a sustainable future’. Says teacher Mr O Súilleabháin, who led the litter pick, “Our students noticed a lot of rubbish on their early morning walks to school, and so headed out this weekend to The Burnaby Park, the playground and the picnic benches on Mill Road. The good weather had lots of people out enjoying the sun, but, unfortunately, the park was left in a very bad way…”

Changing all that were Hayley Foley, Jack Killilea, Conan Ledwith, Sophie Hayden, Leonie Gerber, Andrew Gaube and Adam Kopec.

Great work, and an inspiration, hopefully, to Greystonians young and old to look after their own picnic patch. 

And should you spot anyone leaving a calling card or two behind, you have GG’s permission to slap them across the back of the head.

But only with whatever discarded boxes, cans or broken patio chairs that they’ve released into the wild.