Pointless and so easily avoided (Litter and Littering)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Litter and Littering
Date:	08/04/03 (237 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none

Disadvantages: filth and damage

What really makes me mad about littering is that it is so blatantly just a result of laziness and a lack of respect for the environment. I suspect if you are reading this, then the odds are you share my views. There's not much to be gained from preaching to the converted, but here we go anyway.

Apart from being unsightly, the throwing of litter onto the ground causes a range of problems.

1) Edible litter attracts rats. Rats are not the nicest of beasties, they do carry diseases sometimes, they can be very destructive and they can become a real nusiance in urban environments.

2) Litter damages wildlife and domestic animals - dogs will sink their teeth into almost anything and they do get injured by litter, and litter poses an ongoing threat to all sorts of creatures as well as blocking out the light for plants.

3)Do you want your children playing in it? It hardly makes for a safe, clean environment for kids.

The vast bulk of litter, based on observation, is material from food products, discarded by people too idle to find a bin or take it home. A MacDonalds in a town centre always leads to vast numbers of empty drinks containers and burger boxes, but most fast food outlets add to the problem. As far as I can tell, people of all ages indulge in this inconsiderate practise.

Some people take a far more dramatic approach to littering - fly tipping. The act of taking a load of your household waste and, isntead of driving it to the nearest dump, depositing it on the side of the road. These impromtu dumps are ugly, hazardous and again, why? Is it so much effort to drive to a dump? I'll admit it's an attitude I don't understand.

Perhaps the most worrying form of litter is that left from drug taking - improvised kit for glue sniffing (I found some of this one left in the grounds of my secondry school) and the dreaded syringes. Left anywhere these are bad news, but more often than not they seem
to end up in children's play areas, making it unsafe for children to be let out on their own.

So what can you do about it? Not a lot. Kids walk past my front garden to and from school every day and I get a regular supply of crisp packets thrown over the fence, despite there being a wheelie bin at the top of the drive - I'd be more than happy if they used that instead. While it isn't just kids, they do seem to be the worst culprits. The council cannot afford the manpower requierd to clean up.

What depresses me most is this - I've got a group of volunteers who want to clean up a local beauty spot, but we have been told by the council responsible for it (not Redditch) that to do so we will have to take out 5 million pounds worth of public liability insurance! So you can't even clear it up yourself without running into problems.

So, what solutions? Bigger fines for those who go fly tipping, and more attention to this rather than just turnnig a blind eye. The other useful one would be less packaging - its the packaging from snacks that gets spread about the most, and most of it is plastic and won't rot down.

In many ways, our litter problem is a symptom of a culture that has no respect for the environment, no awareness of any responsibility for suroundings and is too bone idle to make the tiny effort needed to tidy up after itself. The dreadful state of our public spaces should be a source of shame to all of us. It is unreasonable to ask that the council takes full responsibility and bears the cost of this never ending cleanup job, butI don't rate the chances of getting our 'not my problem' society to change its behavior any time soon.

Summary: