‘You want your laptop? Come and get it…’

Dear David Rodriguez Campo, Bristol University,

This morning, when walking through the park, I came across your rucksack, containing, among other things, your Macbook. Now in the past, I’ve taken great pleasure in returning items to their owners, reuniting them with their belongings, people who may have been worried or fretting about their whereabouts. I like getting to play my part in making the world a nice place where people look out for each other. I’ve lost things, found things, hey, what goes around comes around, right?

But your case is different. You see, your bag was part of a devastating mess of crap strewn all over the grassy slopes side of Brandon Hill, one of Bristol’s best-loved and oldest parks.

Living close to this park, I spend a lot of time here. And each summer, I joke and curse and banter with the park wardens about the state of the park in the mornings when groups of students and young adults have gathered to enjoy the park on a summer’s evening but have then left ugly great piles of rubbish behind them.

Perhaps the wrong woman found your bag today. I spend my days campaigning for cleaner seas, I run an organisation here in Bristol called City to Sea, coming up with campaigns and ideas that inspire people to change the way we use and dispose of single-use plastics. Plastics that might get left behind in a park, get blown on to the streets and harbour, wash down storm drains and end up in the sea, where, I’m sad to say, it’s looking likely that there’ll be more plastic than fish in it by the time you’re around 50. (It’s already in most of the fish you or your mates are eating too by the way.)

I’m angry that you didn’t clean up your mess and trashed the park which you and your friends came to enjoy. For being so out of it or whatever that you not only left your crisp packets, plastic bottles, beer cans, disposable barbecues, plastic bags and your herby marinated olives behind, but also your Macbook. And part of me doesn’t want to give it back to you. Part of me wants you to learn that leaving a trail of crap behind you isn’t cool. Whether it’s plastic litter or a laptop. 

And I’m sad too. Sad that at this point in time you’re not connecting your actions with their consequences; not sufficiently in love and in awe of this wildly beautiful planet we live on enough to protect it.

But hey. I used to hang out in parks and get high and no doubt left a few crisp packets, cans and fag butts around. And back then, some 20 years ago, life was less ‘plastic-wrapped’ and less convenient than it is now.

You could blame the supermarkets for wrapping all the food you want to eat in plastic. Or the council for not providing enough bins (except there was a bin about 10 feet away from your spot so perhaps we won’t blame them). Or the manufacturers for not having implemented a deposit return scheme like our European counterparts. But ultimately, the responsibility lies with you.

From the looks of what you’re studying (yes, I’ve had a look at what else was in your bag), you’re a smart lad. And if the law didn’t prevent me from blackmailing you I’d probably ask you to organise a fundraiser gig to buy back the laptop for half its market value and give the money to the Friends of Brandon Hill. Or get you to come and do a beach clean with me one weekend and see just how much of this plastic crap ends up along the riverbanks of the Avon and gets out to sea.

But I can’t do any of those things. So this letter is my effort to make ‘reasonable steps’ to find you, the owner. I’m making an educated guess that you’re a nice guy who wouldn’t willingly harm anyone or anything – even the sea. We all make mistakes. Just so happens that this one landed on my doorstep. So come and get your laptop, you muppet. I’m @nataliefee on Twitter.

Natalie  

Natalie Fee is an author, TV presenter and the founder of City to Sea

UPDATE: April 22, 12.08pm

Bag returned to one happy (& apologetic!) owner, with a promise from him to join a beach clean after his exams. ???? pic.twitter.com/HkQPvYVMYL

— natalie fee (@nataliefee) April 22, 2016

Read more: My Bristol favourites: Natalie Fee