Do you class a Banana skin as litter?
Comments
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BigMitch41 wrote:Hedge or undergrowth perfectly fine, road/lane or pavement not fine. People ******* fags onto the road or pavement really pi$$es me off!
Flicking is a bad word?Paracyclist
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****** Is pretty bad to be fair... :-)
Yeah, fag butts have plastic in and don't degrade. Much worse0 -
It's a slippery subject, that's for sure.The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Carbonator wrote:Bananas don't grow from hedges, or in the UK.
[pedant mode/]
Yes they do
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35131751
[/pedant mode]"It must be true, it's on the internet" - Winston Churchill0 -
Imposter wrote:DeVlaeminck wrote:]Apparently it takes 2 years for a banana skin to biodegrade which is longer than I'd have thought but even so if it's out of view say in dense undergrowth I don't think it's a problem. I usually do pocket them but on occasion will chuck them, not in a field or similar but out of sight in abed of nettles or something, might reconsider now I know they take 2 years but I still wouldn't object to others doing it as said abve i it goes in landfill is that better? I don't compost all my food waste - or in fact any.
The 2-year thing is a bit of an internet hoax - in reality, a banana skin takes about the same amount of time to decompose as any other organic material in the same environment. It might take two years if you dropped one on top of a mountain in Tibet, but 2 years in a roadside hedge in the UK? Nah...
+1 to that. In my compost bin which runs pretty cool and slow, a banana skin will be dark brown in 3 days and just about vanished in a couple of weeks. Orange peel takes a lot longer. I wouldn't lose any sleep over disposing of a banana skin in a patch of nettles or somewhere similar out of sight. The f@ckwit drivers who pull over and empty their ashtrays into the road should also be buried in a shallow grave away from prying eyes.0 -
I agree that in the street a 'nana skin is litter. In the countryside.... well the Jury's out.
If there are very few people tossing banana skins into the hedge then it's not an issue. The yellowness quickly disappears so it is not unsightly. In warmer weather it does biodegrade quickly - leave one on your kitchen worktop at home for a week and see how quickly it goes black and slimy. It will be a bit slower outside but not much in the summer.
At this time of year the breakdown process is much slower so in theory it may be litter for a little while then just fodder for the worms.
However run a Sportive or Etape with hundreds even thousands of participants and provide bananas at the food stops and it very quickly becomes a litter issue.......
There used to a be an anti-litter campaign which used the phrase something like... "My one little bit wont matter...."
What do I do?
Toss it into the hedge mostly as we live in a very rural place with not so many walkers and cyclists.0 -
Despite what we all think, lets face facts, if you are riding and have a local authority/PCSO vehicle behind you and you throw a banana skin, even if it lands in a hedge/field, you will likely face a fine as it is deemed littering.
The authorities class it as antisocial behaviour.
Might sound ludicrous, but its reality unfortunately.0 -
Who are you calling a forking litter bug ?!
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If its perishable, its not litter imo.
As long as its chucked in a bush or whatever, whats the problem0 -
It depends where you throw it - and I don't mean hedge or pavement, I mean in relation to the rights the public has to the land you dispose it on. But if littering is an offence in the area, then a banana skin is litter.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/43/section/87
There is a bit of a myth about nana skin and decomposition time. Given they will rot in your fruit bowl and take everything else with it pretty quick. I don't really see any harm is chucking them in a hedge given it will be rotted down in 2 weeks or less
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plastic bags take between 15 and 1000 years? hardly pinning themselves down there are they!www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes0
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Chris Bass wrote:plastic bags take between 15 and 1000 years? hardly pinning themselves down there are they!
Plastic covers a lot of different products. It ought to be an even wider range than that as the biodegradable ones take rather less than 15 years to decompose. I know because there are flakes of one all over place under the seats in my car because left it in the car and forgot about it!Faster than a tent.......0 -
I class banana peel as a snack for our pet guinea pigs, bizarrely they love it!
Throwing it in the bush as I cycle by? I would considering that littering, bad etiquette, something to dispose of properly.================
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I wouldn't bother about throwing one in a hedgerow so long as it isn't stuck in the branches. If it falls to the ground or in the ditch where it goes unnoticed then its fine.0
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Does Durianrider have an opinion on this?0
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Lets get some perspective when I see the number of gel wrappers littering roadsides...I tuck banana skins somewhere where they can discretely decompose or provide fodder for wildlife.Make mine an Italian, with Campagnolo on the side..0
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Around here, farmers leave: Slurry (saturated with oxides of nitrogen, not eco friendly), hedge cuttings (how many damn punctures have I had cycling or driving), mud (once, I actually missed a ffork in the road and went the wrong way it was so deep), hay and straw all over the roads and no one calls it litter despite the mess and the hassle it causes. I think I'll send the ••••••• a bill for muc off. What's the problem with a banana skin?seanoconn - gruagach craic!0
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The rate of decomposition of a banana skin will depend on the soil, altitude, etc. You shouldn't leave them on a mountain top especially, or in open, boggy/heathy country where they are likely to take ages to decompose in bare and/or waterlogged and/or nutrient poor acidic soil. Less of a problem in fertile lowland soil, but they will still be there for a while so it's only polite to avoid depositing them where people will see them. A bit like taking a leak really - there are times and places when it's OK and others when it's not... ;-)0
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Meanwhile....
Is a banana skin that much of a problem? Really?The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
In the bigger scheme of things? Yes.neeb wrote:That's like saying "look at all of the people around the world killing and maiming each other - is it really that much of a problem if I kick you in the shin just for the hell of it? Really?"The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
There's always a bigger scheme of things though, whatever scale you are looking at. The best thing is to apply the same priciples at all scales, within reason. The person who thinks about where they throw their bananna skin is not going to be dumping their sofa in a layby or scattering KFC cartons in the street. The only issue would arise where there was a conflict between smaller and larger scale priorities, e.g. if being careful with your bananna skin somehow made it more likely that Shell would start drilling in the arctic... (I bet Shell executives chuck bananna skins everywhere like ninja throwing stars and don't collapse their cardboard cartons properly when they put them in the recycling bin).PBlakeney wrote:
In the bigger scheme of things? Yes.neeb wrote:That's like saying "look at all of the people around the world killing and maiming each other - is it really that much of a problem if I kick you in the shin just for the hell of it? Really?"0 -
My point is that a decomposing biodegradable banana skin in a hedgerow isn't worth worrying about.need wrote:stuff
Other stuff is.The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
And my point, obviously, is that you can't arbitrarily draw a line between things that are worth worrying about and things that aren't (or at least not within the limits we are talking about here), otherwise you'd be going around kicking people in the shins, throwing bananna skins onto their lawns and generally being obnoxious. Most people think that such things are worth avoiding in polite company..PBlakeney wrote:
My point is that a decomposing biodegradable banana skin in a hedgerow isn't worth worrying about.neeb wrote:stuff
Other stuff is.
But I actually agree with you that throwing a bananna skin into a hedgerow on brown-earth soil in a reasonable remote place in such a manner that it isn't an eyesore is OK.0 -
I personally cannot see a problem with throwing a banana skin in a hedgerow it would be a different situation if it was a energy gel :shock:0
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OK, technically not littering, but it seems widely accepted that horses are allowed to leave massive piles of manure in the road. I accept that you can't stop a horse pooping, but why aren't horse riders compelled to come back and shovel it up?
I know someone who had life-threatening pneumonia from horse manure spraying onto his drinks bottle - he was in ITU, gravely unwell, for a couple of weeks. They cultured the bug and it was one that only grows in horse manure, apparently. They also found it on his bottle, and the conclusion was this is the only way he could have got it.
Anyway, not only does it pose health risk but it's dangerous (skid risk) and frankly just a bit disgusting.
There's a large equestrian centre near me, and the roads always have piles of horse manure.
Sorry for the minor diversion, but it's my bug bear!0 -
Banana skins are litter, and you will get fined for leaving them if you are caught, just like cigarette ends or any other rubbish.
I've seen two occasions of a cyclist in my group getting shouted at for leaving a banana skin behind- one was in a sparse bush in someone's front garden in the middle of a town, and the other was under a tree outside a private school, where the caretaker happened to be driving past.
I freely admit that I don't usually carry my banana skins all the way home with me, but when I do dispose of them it's always when no-one is looking and always into a patch of overgrown wasteland by the side of the road so it is out of site and will probably have composted before anyone comes across it. If I can't get rid of it then the inevitable banana goo isn't really a problem as I keep mine in a separate 'food' pocket so any unused wrapped food gets rinsed and the jersey goes in the wash anyway.0 -
No it's not. Two completely different subjects which have no relevance to each other. Sssshhh. :roll:neeb wrote:
That's like saying "look at all of the people around the world killing and maiming each other - is it really that much of a problem if I kick you in the shin just for the hell of it? Really?"PBlakeney wrote:Meanwhile....
Is a banana skin that much of a problem? Really?0
