I live close to the quiet fields and little rivers of The Shire on one side and to Mordor on the other.
My home area once had very dirty industies: coal and iron mining, iron smelting and steel making, pottery and brick manufacture. The mining and iron works have now gone and the ceramics industry uses cleaner energy for its kilns.
The desolation caused by pollution and coal waste and slag heaps is begining to green over, sometimes naturally and sometimes with the help of mankind. It will be many, many years before the clean-up is finished but I like to think of my home town as Mordor recovering after the fall of Barad Dur.
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