Save us from the plague of plastic tree protectors

Can nothing protect us from a plague of plastic tree protectors? They’ve descended on us like locusts, covering our hills, dales and roadsides with a nasty green and black petrochemical swarm. They are not for the most part biodegradable, and those that claim to be will still disintegrate into microplastic debris lodged into our soil.

I should know. Five years ago I planted 3,000 tree saplings on the fields below our house; and there to this day the pale green square or tubular guards remain, the young trees having outgrown any need for protection and the guards, or remnants of guards, littering the grassy slope. I know we’ll have to remove and collect them. I know it will be a bugger of a job because they get snagged with grass, nettles and brambles, and the plastic will have become brittle and liable to shatter.