GPS Tracking Helping to Contain Litter
8 Sep 2015Through a Snowdon Tidy charity initiative, volunteer litter pickers in Snowdonia are using GPS tracking devices to record where trash is found.
The charity’s initiative is in achieving and sustaining a worthwhile reduction of litter on all the major paths of Snowdon from the base to the summit. This will include responsible disposal of trash and car parks.
The Snowdonia National Park Authority team, Snowdonia Society and RAW Adventures all teamed up this summer to clean up the litter found on the Miners’ track starting at Pen y Pass and working all the way to Lake Glaslyn. The group which included 17 volunteers were guided by a few experienced Mountain Leaders; Ross Worthington (RAW Adventures), Helen Pye (SNPA) and Kin Choi.
There were 20 bags of litter collected inside a 4 hour time period, which included mostly drink packaging, food, clothing and mountain safety equipment.
During their litter clean-up across the national park, Snowdonia Society volunteers carried personal GPS tracking devices with them. These devices are being used to record the locations the litter is found and to help with the building of a computer map of the areas that are most messy.
Then, these areas will be targeted to be cleaned up more regularly.
Owain Thomas, project officer, informed BBC Radio Wales that when comparing how many visitors Snowdon receives with other popular UK mountain areas, the accumulated litter it receives is relatively low.
However, there are specific hotspots in the more popular picnic areas that will include most of the litter and often the winds will blow the litter around the mountain.
The GPS tracking device is no bigger than a person’s thumb. Every time litter is found and is picked up, there’s a button that is clicked, which allows the device to log the area where the piece of litter was found.
The Snowdonia National Park Authority, Snowdon Mountain Railway, Cymdeithas Eryri the Snowdonia Society, Natural Resources Wales, Halfway Café, Keep Wales Tidy, RAW Adventures, North Wales Environmental Outdoor Charter Group, Bangor University, Snowdon Marathon, Welsh Institute for Sustainable Environments and Wales Centre for Behaviour Change all support this initiative.
With 20 bags of litter collected, the general cleanliness of the Miners track going up to Glaslyn was pretty noticeable. When you consider how popular the track is to visitors, it is quite clear that the SNPA Warden’s team are working hard and doing a great job.
SNPA’s warden, Helen Pye, welcomed the innovation. She says that in some areas, litter can become a problem. Everything from barbecues to tents to Coke cans from the 1960s to 60 Euros in cash was found.
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