Petersfield's great weeding challenge!

Tindle News

Hampshire county councillors, Russell Oppenheimer and Rob Mocatta, are excited about the possibility of making Petersfield the first glyphosate-free town in Hampshire. Residents are being encouraged to weed their neighbourhood streets to prevent the use of chemicals.

Transcript

00:00I'm Russell Oppenheimer and I'm here with my colleague Rob McCatter. We're the County

00:05Councilors for Petersfield and we'd like to talk to you about our plan to try and

00:09get weeds removed from Petersfield by working together. So Rob, can you just tell us why are

00:18we doing this to try and engage with residents and with local authorities to get weeds removed

00:24from Petersfield? Yeah, thanks Russell. We see this as a joint venture between the different

00:29levels of the local council, the district council, the county council, the town council and local

00:33residents trying to improve the look and feel of our town. We feel this tremendous spirit in

00:39Petersfield for helping from residents, from people like Peaceful Society, from the rubbish singers and

00:43we're just trying to build on that. So we focus on weeds on the streets, focus on trying to get

00:48people to clear outside their houses, to help if they're interested in doing so and to try and make

00:53people look prettier. We've just walked up Lavent Street and I've talked to some of the retailers

00:57in Lavent Street about what they do outside their shops and there's a tremendous spirit

01:01there and we're just trying to build on that. We think there's a real incentive for the local

01:05councils to work with residents to make Petersfield look a more attractive place for both existing

01:10residents and for our visitors. Thanks and I know some people have health concerns about

01:14glyphosate. Why is this particular spot on Tilmore Road such a concern? Just behind me up here

01:21we've got the bridge over the railway and the squirrel of weeds growing beside it and clearly the kids

01:26coming down to and from TPS from Home Juniors walk along there and therefore we're trying to

01:31eliminate the amount of glyphosate that goes on the vegetation that people could pick up. We're

01:36trying to reduce the amount in our town. We'd love to eliminate it all together but the goal of this

01:40this campaign is to reduce the amount of glyphosate that goes onto the streets of Peaceful

01:45for the impact it has on people's health, on their pets and on the environment and we just

01:49the more people join in this the more we achieve that goal. So we're basically asking everyone to

01:56do whatever they can right? Yeah exactly we're pragmatic about this we have a tremendous spirit

02:02of volunteering in Peace so we're trying to build on that and trying to focus it on making the town

02:07look more attractive and I think that people they've started last year we're working with the county

02:12council with the district council with the cleaning authorities just to try and make sure we build that

02:18sense of we're all doing something to make the town look attractive. Thank you and thanks also to

02:23the Petersville Post for all their help with getting our campaign off the ground. You're welcome.

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