Litter Picking

27 July 2025

Eltham Common Wood

Litter-picking in this beautiful area is always enjoyable and productive.  The woodland itself, with its many beech trees and more open spaces has a very different feel to the other woods.

While we collected the usual 16 plus sacks of general litter in and around the woodland edges, unfortunately, much had been shredded into tiny bits by recent mows which made it both more difficult and time-consuming to collect. Littering of this nature is, of course damaging - leading to soil and water pollution, impacting plant life and the overall health of the ecosystem.

The session for this area always starts in the car park behind Severndroog Castle where there is usually a good deal of general litter and quite a bit of fly-tipping too. We were pleased to see that the fly-tipping was reduced this visit to a large double-glazed window panel. Whether this was due to extra collections from RGB since our last visit, or less tipping generally is the question!

We split into teams and descend the hill to the common from different directions to achieve greatest coverage. There are usually bottles, cans and chocolate wrappers en route but the largest amount of litter is always towards the bottom of the hill in the area of woodland which meets the common itself. The woodland here is much more densely populated with holly shrubs, brambles and ivy on the ground, which hide a multitude of litter. An early find was a couple of sacks of plumbing paraphernalia - some loose, some in bags which had been torn apart (presumably by scavenging foxes). Additionally, there was a further sack, a short distance away, containing household materials - a grubby towel, pan scrubs and similar kitchen cleaning materials - presumably dumped by the same person.

This shows just a small amount of the plumbing paraphernalia we found dumped in the woods.

In random locations, we found one brown ladies shoe, a large sock, a blue school shirt and a pair of pants! And, as always, there were the usual selection of vapes and 2 of the large gas canisters. Additionally, we found 2 litres of unopened, sour milk and 3 empty Easter Egg Hunt boxes placed neatly behind a large tree. Why?

The most unpleasant find of all were 16 litres of urine in a variety of used 'pop' bottles. While horrible to handle, one of our volunteers tackled them with little complaint. A surprising fact, however, is that human urine contains nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium but in such undiluted quantities as we found here, it can be harmful to both the plants and the soil. So the best way to deal with such a find is to open the bottles and disperse of the waste over a wide area unless, of course, this is in the area designated as a SSSI where it would be necessary to remove it from the site completely.

The most disgusting find of the session - the question is...Why?

Finally, a rather sadder find was a dead buzzard. We are very fortunate to see buzzards in the woods fairly often though it is the first dead one we have come across. As part of the natural ecosystem of the woodland, we left it to continue its decaying process on the woodland floor. There it will be consumed by scavengers like foxes and other carrion-eating birds. The carcass will then continue to be broken down as a result of natural decompositon, weathering and the activity of microbes until it disappears completely.

Sadly we discovered a dead buzzard but left it in place - decay is a vital part of the woodland ecology.

Our Litter Picking team play an essential part in protecting the woodlands. Can you help?

Thanks to our 9 volunteers for helping keep the woodlands clear and helping to protect the ecology from microplastics and items likely to poison the soil and water systems.

.