Littering, Nature | Excuse me, what were you thinking here?

The comment expresses the writer’s opinions.

(Sandefjords Blad): On a quiet Sunday morning, the eider can be heard outside Fruvika on Vesterøya in Sandefjord. A couple of white-cheeked geese fly by and the horizon gives it the whole perspective of infinity, but in the middle of all this:

Cigarette butts and more irrefutable burn marks after a disposable grill?

It is actually worse than the time the Ministry of Foreign Affairs placed one of the world’s rarest mixing vases in a staircase so that it was used as an ashtray. The vase was believed to have a value of between NOK 50 and 100 million in 2022.

Both parts are irreplaceable and must be taken care of for posterity. But while the mixing vase is now placed and well protected in a display case at the National Museum, our rocky cliffs and beautiful nature are still unprotected and for the free use of anyone who wants to.

But it requires wisdom and understanding.

Because the responsibility to take care of the values for ourselves and posterity is just as fully present.

There’s nothing like laying your back on a soft and warm boulder after a summer swim, but it’s also a geological formation that’s quite unique.

It has taken at least 40 ice ages over 2.5 million years to shape the completely unique archipelago landscape that we not only like – but that we love.

So it takes 15 minutes of sausage grilling to destroy a rock. The fire cracks open the mountain and leaves ugly marks – which will probably remain until the next ice age. The same bedrock may not be destroyed by a single cigarette butt and other litter, unless a forest fire then starts.

But littering destroys nature and what we perceived as most valuable about our open spaces.

And if you take a trip out to the open areas, cans, bottles, snipe and other rubbish keep appearing. So then we are back to the original question, you who stubbed out the smoke in the rock at Fruvika and left the rubbish behind – what were you thinking?

Would you have used the most expensive and finest thing you own as an ashtray?

I strongly doubt that.