Florian Greckl has collected this pile in a wooded area – mainly beer bottles and cans. © Florian Greckl
Fast food bags, cigarettes, bottles: farmers are increasingly complaining about garbage in their fields.
Erding – Broken glass in the meadow, plastic in the field: Garbage that is carelessly thrown away is a major problem – for the environment, for agriculture and thus also for food production. The farmers have to regularly collect rubbish in their fields – if it is not already in the ground.
When Amadé "Mowgli" Billesberger is on the road with the tractor, it can happen that he stops in the middle of work. "If I see large pieces of garbage, I get off," says the organic farmer from Moosinning. And garbage, which can now be found almost everywhere. "An estimated 60 to 70 percent ends up there safely due to the wind," Billesberger suspects. Balloons with wedding cards, for example.
This is not the case with garbage in fields next to busy roads and popular walking paths, such as fast food bags, some of which still have food in them. "I think it's antisocial. That and cigarette butts everywhere: If you have to consume it, then you should at least dispose of it properly," says Billesberger, who has also found car tires, furniture and shoes, recently finding a flip-flop in a hydroelectric power plant. "And for years, a small bottle of vodka almost every day. Someone has to live by the creek and throw them in."
He composts leaves and small branches that arrive at the power plant and drives them to the fields, says Billesberger. "We sort out a lot, but it's impossible to get the compost all the way in." He therefore appeals to his fellow human beings to dispose of their garbage themselves and to be a role model for the children "in order to leave them a reasonably clean planet".
Some time ago, the volunteer group "Garbage everywhere - looking away is easy, picking it up too" was on the road around the Billesberger-Hof with initiator Sarah Friedrich. "Farmers put a lot of work and effort into food production. They don't have the time to clean up the fields of garbage," says the Eichenrieder. She finds it "sad that their work is made more difficult and that they don't see their own connection to food. Because if things go badly, the garbage goes into the processing process, and in the end you eat it with you." You can help the farmers "incredibly by not doing it in the first place or by collecting garbage while walking".
Joint action at the Billesberger-Hof: the volunteers of the garbage collection group around Sarah Friedrich (front, 2nd from left). © (Garbage everywhere)
Obviously, more and more people are doing this. Recently, more and more citizens have contacted Friedrich who wanted to borrow the group's grabbers in order to start collection campaigns in their towns. "That's good, because this issue can only be solved as a community."
One of those who are taking action himself is Sebastian Stemmer. Together with his family, he runs Strigl's farm shop in Niederding with regional products. "We grow vegetables such as potatoes, beetroot and onions, as well as rapeseed and cereals." The master farmer also makes the experience that garbage is a problem, especially on the roads, where many cars drive. "There's probably a lot thrown out the window": bottles, cans, yoghurt pots.
Two years ago, a collection campaign was launched for the first time in Niederding with the rural youth. "We were 20, 25 people. One morning, an eight-ton tipper truck came together. It will have been three or four cubic meters of garbage," says Stemmer. At the repetition this spring, it was less, the small Ramadama would like to organize the Niederdinger annually.
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But is that enough? "When I'm laying potatoes and I see something, I get off and collect it so that we have a clean floor for food production. Without plastic, without broken glass," says Stemmer and says: "It would be good if walkers at the edge of the field saw something that they could take to the nearest trash can. That would help a lot." Or put it at the edge of the field so that it can be collected there. "Or even better: just don't throw anything away."
Garbage in fields that is ploughed under. Glass bottles that break: "That has always bothered me insanely," says Florian Greckl, who comes from a former farming family. The Unterschwillacher travels a lot by bike, "that's where I notice it extremely. The more busy the roads, the worse the problem." Household waste that is bought quickly and disposed of just as quickly through the car window: cigarette packets and butts, alcohol bottles, coffee cups, fast food bags and more and more returnable bottles and cans, "which could also be carried back". Because even if many deposit machines make a fuss about crushed cans or dirty bottles: The dealers are obliged to take back if there is a deposit symbol on it, says Greckl.
"It bothers me so much because I know it myself when you have to get up and down as a farmer all the time because you don't want to plough under the garbage," he says. Or with the mower for hay and silage - "at the latest after the third time driving over it, the bottle breaks, and you have the shards in the hay and green fodder".
Whenever he is out and about by bike or on foot, he picks up garbage, says Greckl. "I'll go into the underbushes, too." For example, he found a good dozen small vodka bottles at the former sports field in Herdweg at 80 meters. "Eight weeks later, the farmer has collected a similar amount in the same place," says Greckl.
Yet collecting garbage is so much more than just cleaning nature of rubbish, says Friedrich: "It's like meditation. We take up so much of nature, you can give something back," she says.
