Hikers: eat bananas – but take your skins home

They take two years to biodegrade – and Scottish mountains are littered with them

(Taken from the Guardian)

I have climbed Ladhar Bheinn, one of Scotland’s finest peaks. The view was glorious. And I threw a banana skin at it. I have stood on the magnificent Aonach Eagach ridge and gazed down on Loch Achtriochtan. And I threw a banana skin at that, too.

In fact, there are few mountains in Scotland I haven’t thrown a banana skin on. Forget all those energy drinks: nothing gets you up a ben like a banana. What’s more, they come in handy biodegradable wrappers. So I’m practically doing the mountain a favour, feeding the eco-cycle of nature.

But apparently I’m not. The John Muir Trust, which protects many of Scotland’s wild places, has just given banana-skin chuckers a stern ticking off. The trust estimates that there are now 1,000 banana skins strewn across Ben Nevis. Walkers, it seems, don’t realise that it takes ages for a banana skin to degrade: two years, in fact.

This comes as a shock. I have tutted my way round the litter-strewn shores of Loch Lomond and chased Mars Bars wrappers grabbed by the wind. Now I find that I am part of a “significant minority, who are littering and spoiling the experience for everyone else”.

And it gets worse. According to Keep Scotland Beautiful, orange peel, another of my happily jettisoned waste products, is pretty bad too. Still, at least I’ve never left a glass bottle. They last 1 million years, apparently – though I wonder how they know.

A load of rot: how long your litter takes to biodegrade

Paper bag – 1 month

Apple core – 8 weeks

Orange peel and banana skins – 2 years

Cigarette end – 18 months to 500 years

Plastic bag – 10 to 20 years

A plastic bottle – 450 years

Chewing gum – 1 million years

From Keep Britain Tidy (keepbritaintidy,org)

I came across this piece in a local paper and it made me grin…

 Take a look in the mirror

MANY local guest house owners take the well-being of their guests seriously even when they are out and about.

One such lady is happy to discuss travel plans and give tips and advice on what to do and where to go to her many regular visitors. Even when her guests are independent and make their holiday arrangements without the benefit of her advice, she is solicitous on their return.

The remarks of one group who obviously do not subscribe to the philosophy of the poet Burns when he suggested that we try “to see oursels as ithers see us” has shaken her faith in some tourists’ grasp of reality.

The sheer crust of these people has left her speechless which in her case, it has to be said, is quite some feat.

When her guests returned from a day out she enquired, “What did you do today?”

They replied: “We went to Fort Augustus and Drumnadrochit.”

She responded: “That’s nice. Did you enjoy it?”

Their killer reply was: “Not really. They were full of tourists.”

Click HERE for source

You have got to love the fact that the web is abuzz with tweets about the NHS.

Like the Loch Ness Monster – the NHS is something that you either believe in or don’t, but the world would be a poorer place if the idea of it did not exist.