To think that the litter on our roads has got to ridiculous levels?

[inigomontoyahwillcox]

Maybe it's just where I live (NW Essex - M11, A11 are my usual major roads) but the amount of litter on the motorways, dual carriageways, and A roads is just crazy! It feels like we're living in a country with minimal infrastructure. It became very clear yesterday during the high winds not only how bloody awful it looks, but also dangerous it is in high winds (we had some litter hit our windshield).

I understand it's hard to collect litter from verges and central reservations due to the traffic, but we seemed to manage in the past (and other countries seem to deal with it) - or has littering/dumping gotten out of control? Where does it all come from anyway? Are people just throwing it out of their windows?!

It really is grim. And it's not just motorways and dual carriageway. I live in a small rural village tucked away from main roads and only accessed by lanes. It's bad along the lanes when it never used to be. There's a small passing place in particular where delivery drivers often stop that is appalling

Not just where you live, I am in Kent , regularly drive on the M2, the slip roads are really bad and the A roads leaving and entering towns. I have never seen it so bad. Makes me sad when I see the brave daffodils pushing up amongst the detritus. I always pick up when on my walks but these places are inaccessible safely for a lone pedestrian. Lots of carrier bags with beer cans in them, tied up and thrown, methinks work's vans?

If a country doesn't look after or care for its people, they won't look after or care for it.

Not sure what you mean? Because people don't receive enough benefits or we have a cost of living crisis they should be able to chuck litter about?

It benefits everyone to live in a clean litter free environment. Individuals can help maintain that clean, litter free environment by taking their crisp packets, drink bottles and takeaway cartons home and disposing of them in their bin, or using one of the public bins around. Why would them being on minimum wage make that an unacceptable prospect.

I'm in the midlands now.
Litter here is awful. I don't know why it is how it is but some.roads you go down and it's so bad it's like a scene from some post apocalyptic zombie show. When I first moved here I thought maybe a bin had fallen over, but the road is always like that every time I walk down it to town.
I think it's to do with over population tbh.
That road has several HMOs so instead of houses having 1 family of 4 there's 10 adults. The wheelie bin fills up, so black bags end up left against trees or in front garden etc.
rats rip bags, rubbish blows everywhere.

It's very depressing. We have litter pickers by our front door and use them on local walks but we cannot pick the sheer volume of crap thrown from cars.

Same here. We have a fortnightly local area litter pick and that same night we end up with cars parking up and leaving entire take away containers at the side of the road! People literally chuck empty bottles out of car windows as they drive past and don't get me started in the dog poo which I never saw on our road before covid. We live just by a park with half a dozen poo bins!

Britain is undoubtedly broken, yet I don't understand it, we keep being told that increasing the population via mass immigration and encouraging people to breed is the cure to all our socio-economic problems and despite the UK population being at record high levels things are just getting worse and worse... and worse.

It's almost as though exponentially inflating the population isn't actually a good thing for the country and the more people we have the worse things become.

It's a real headscratcher

@Coxspurplepippin I mean that when people feel disenfranchised they stop caring. They stop caring about themselves and they stop caring about their surroundings. I'm not saying they should, I'm just saying they do. Look at countries with fair, equal, societies, they are proud of their countries and take care to look after them. If they are treated like shit they return the favour. Have you ever been to a country that looks after all their citizens that looks like ours? Covered in litter with the rivers and seas full of sewage....

I grew up in the 1970s in the US. It was drummed in to us at school over and over about pollution, littering etc. I could not ever imagine littering. Maybe it's time for school to do this again (as I'm sure there's a massive littering issue in the States too).

Yes it's so ignorant

Take it home or find a bin

Hmm

Everyone can do their bit, no excuse for dropping litter

This.

This is true.

Nobody gives a shit anymore. Why should they, nobody else does!?

Its really depressing. Everywhere you go by car for the entire journey it's as if someone has tipped rubbish along the verges from a bottomless sack so that every metre of every mile is littered with plastic, cans, bottles and wrappers. Plastic shreds flapping in the bushes, one use drinks cartons, polystyrene chip boxes, takeaway bags just discarded. It blows my brain that it's clearly not one or two messy idiots, clearly the culture and mindset now in this country to just chuck junk out of the car window. In my rural village there are regularly hundreds of beer cans dumped in the dykes and fields despite me and other dedicated villagers periodically doing a litterpick. It's so disheartening to clear an area to know some tosspot will have it as bad as ever within the week. You can literally see shredded plastic bottles and shards of metal cans sticking out amongst the growing crops where it's all got ploughed in! Most of us get a weekly or fortnightly rubbish collection straight from our doorstep - how hard can it be to wait til you get home and put it in the bin? I despair.

We are North Yorkshire and I literally had this chat with my eldest tonight. All the verges of the roads are really bad - I think it's partly morons dropping more but also the salt has really killed off the vegetation so you can see more. And obviously winter. But it's really noticeable. Our rural lanes are suffering so I'll go out with a litter picking thing but it's quite sad to see. Ps our local town is still tidy. It's just the countryside

@woodhill I agree, I hate litter but when you're disenfranchised and working long hours but still don't have enough to live on, I assume you stop giving a shit and don't really feel inclined to do your bit.

But people used to be so poor and there wasn't the litter.

I suppose there was no packaging or fast food like now

It's nothing to do with people feeling disenfranchised. These are mainly delivery drivers and school mums. They literally do not care, they are well off enough to drive big cars and buy Costa coffees! I see them do it. And the delivery drivers clearly like to have nice tidy vans because god forbid they take their rubbish home. Nope, crisp packets, red bull cans and sandwich packets.

Why is VAT on takeaway food less than when eating in? I think it needs to be equalised and the extra revenue used to clear up the rubbish created.

I don't get the disenfranchised arguement. We all get regular rubbish collections from our doorstep! If you can afford to drive a car, and you can afford beers and takeaways you are hardly a poor victim to be pitied when shoving crap out the car window! Such people are lazy irresponsible turds imo and they are ruining the earth.

Agree with this. Too many excuses

@woodhill People were poor, but they had enough to live on. They had a fairly decent place to live that was affordable, they had a job for life, wages that increased along with inflation, a proper benefits safety net, decent schooling with an opportunity for their children to better themselves at FREE universities, free school uniform if they couldn't afford it, a functioning healthcare system, an opportunity to dispose of their rubbish (all their rubbish) for free, cheap and affordable publicly owned services and public transport, so many more things that we don't have now and all this back when we were a significantly poorer country. They had something to be proud of. Now they've got a bunch of crooks stripping the country of all its assets while they sit in cold, mouldy house while their landlord and politicians get rich off their cheap labour.

I concur.

South Wales and it’s to a same here. Humans just don’t give a shit about anything. The only good thing to come of it imo is that it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. We will make our planet uninhabitable for ourselves at some point, for out and the planet and animals can recover from our abuse.

But that's a bit of a cop out isn't it. No personal responsibility.

Um so what about having a crooked government gives people licence to shove their McDonald's out the car window? In the olden days people had respect and knew right from wrong. They were more hard done by in terms of living standards than ever we are now. Its just that today's society has no respect or responsibility. Everyone has a couldn't give a shit attitude and it's showing.