AN Okehampton resident was ‘incensed’ with the amount of litter she encountered while walking her dogs around Simmons Park, after picking up ten bin bags full of rubbish.

Sarah Potterton was walking her two dogs in the park last week and couldn’t believe the amount of litter that was strewn about the public footpath, particularly around the football club. She used a couple of the carrier bags she found to pick up some rubbish but decided to go back a few days later armed with bin bags.

She said: ‘When it is wet and muddy, I walk my dogs in the park and along the college sports field path. I became incensed with the volume of rubbish around the football club. I looked at all the rubbish and started to pick it up. I went home with several carrier bags full.

‘A few days later I went back down there and filled ten big black bin bags with rubbish, which I took home with me. The whole site was covered in litter. I spoke to people with dealings with the football club, as initially I thought it may have been supporters when they go to watch matches, but a young chap I spoke to who trains the junior club said he believed it was the kids from the college. I then looked at the rubbish and it was mainly sweet papers, pop bottles, crisp packets etc and saw a number of sandwich wrappers that had come from the college canteen.

‘I cannot bear litter. Foreigners come to this area to see the beauty of Dartmoor not to see it covered in litter. Some of it had been there for so long, grass had grown over it. I think today’s society is a bit blinkered to it because they see it everywhere.

‘I believe it is all about education. We will never go back to the time when people were paid to clear up rubbish in public areas — street cleaners just don’t exist in the same way that they used to.’

David Weekes, the chairman of Okehampton Argyle Football Club, said: ‘We haven’t noticed an increase in the amount of litter, but then we haven’t had a home game for a few weeks.’

Derrick Brett, head of secondary education at Okehampton College, said: ‘The area that the litter was collected in is out of bounds to the college students.

‘At lunchtime and break time we actively encourage students to make the most of any fine weather by going outside and playing on the fields, where they are permitted to eat their lunch.

‘Bins are available and as part of the Okehampton community we educate the pupils in the importance of disposing of litter appropriately and in the main, that is what they do.

‘It is possible that the litter accumulates in this area because of the prevailing wind and it is worth noting that even when the students are not here, in the holidays the college staff regularly collect large amounts of rubbish each week on the field.

‘It therefore seems a little unfair that the blame is automatically levelled at the young people of Okehampton, the vast majority of whom are community minded and a credit to the town.’

Picture by James Bird