Clean-up Australia Day comes a little late

When we first arrived in Carwoola (2007) we thought it would show good community spirit to participate in Clean Up Australia Day in the area.  That year we did a 500m stretch of Captains Flat Rd (CFR) and about 300m on Briars Sharrow Rd down to the River.  We have more or less done the same each year - apart from last year when the suits that have allowed to infiltrate the National Organisation passed an edict that CFR was an arterial road and thus couldn't be done.

In 2012 this ukase had been rescinded - and hopefully said suits consigned, physically as well as conceptually, to the garbage bin of history.  (I will note with surprise that the wikipedia disambiguation page on suits does not appear to realise that the term 'suit' is used not to refer to the efficiency of management but to the enervating effect of anal-retentive micro-management!)  Thus I went off again.

Although it was 2 years since I had worked this stretch of road I collected about half the usual amount of material.  I considered various possibilities for this.

• The recent rains had washed a lot of the stuff away: I don't like this idea since there are various 'traps' along the drains where it should have accumulated and it wasn't there;
• The amount of traffic on CFR has decreased (not supported by my observations);
• The nature of the traffic has changed so that the garbage hurling classes have been replaced by sensible folk. (Not supported by observation: there are still a lot of trail-bike riders using the road.)
• I found less of the garbage that was there. (Nothing has changed for me, and the recent roadworks have opened the area up and made it easier to spot crud.)
• People have stopped hurling material (a nice thought but I tend to be pessimistic about such matters).
• The recent road works have buried a lot of the crud.  The only man left standing.

The nature of the material has also changed over the 6 years.  In what follows a couple of companies are identified to give a brickbat where it is needed.

• For the first two years there was a lot of beer bottles and cans and 'burger/chicken wrappers;
• In years 3 and 4 'energy drinks' had taken over as the most common (in terms of number of items).  A brand called 'Mother'  was particularly noticeable.
• This year there few energy drinks or beer containers and amongst the reduced amount of crud the dominant example was mixer drinks (with Bundaberg rum and coke being far and away the most common: they have got a missive from me -see below).

I cannot explain this change although the coverage of marketing in the linked article about marketing makes me wonder if the various products have changed their market penetration in some way.  Another theory is that most of the crud is  hurled by a small number of deviant regular users of the road and they have changed their tastes.

Here is the message I sent on 6 March to the makers of Bundy: "Doing my Clean up Australia Day routine along a local road the commonest garbage was cans from Bundy and Cola.  I suggest you run adverts with hoons throwing cans from their cars and the Bundy Bear throwing them back and sconing the idiots!"  Should they reply I will of course add that to this post.

They have indeed replied very promptly. 

"Hi Martin,

 Thank you for your feedback and commend you on your Clean Up Australia Day activity which our company is also involved in extensively, with each site participating in the clean-up each year.

 I appreciate you taking the time to contact us on this issue and have passed your idea on to the Bundy Brand Team for their consideration.

Kind regards,

BUNDABERG RUM CONSUMER COORDINATOR

4 DISTILLERS PLACE, HUNTINGWOOD NSW 2148"So if your TV set is graced with the Bundy Bear pegging stuff at some hoons, you heard about it here first.