Illegal dumping to blame for invasive plants: Metro Van
Posted May 23, 2012 2:08 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
LOWER MAINLAND (NEWS1130) – Dumping illegal yard scraps means your tax dollars are literally being wasted on crews trying to get rid of invasive plants in the Lower Mainland.
The province announced today that it will put almost $2 million towards getting rid of these species. But Jennifer Grenz with the Invasive Plant Council of Metro Vancouver says people could have prevented this from happening in the first place.
She recently found 150 lbs of knotweed parts and roots in Maple Ridge and explains they easily re-plant themselves. Grenz is now spending the day trying to get rid of them.
“Right now, I am standing in the middle of an infestation of knotweed that runs over 100 metres down a side of a creek that is 20 metres wide,” she explains.
Grenz notes a little goes a long way. “All it takes is 0.2 of a gram of a piece of that plant to become a new plant.”
“It is a huge issue; any little bit of that that gets dumped ends up turning into a forest of it,” she adds.
Most yard clippings can be picked up separately during trash collection, but knotweed can’t be composted; it needs to be double bagged and put into your trash.
