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?!

If people didn't drop it in the first place (costing you nothing) then it wouldn't need picking up.

This must be a use for cheap convict labour.

Years ago I interviewed for a job in Switzerland. I knew I was back in Britain by the amount of litter and the fact everything had out of order signs. It's definitely got much, much worse since. Nobody cares any more, the pride has completely gone. I have a strong suspicion this is pretty much what it was like, atmosphere wise, before the Romans left....!

It’s a good idea. It’s just laziness and lack of care re those who drop litter.

Whoever thought of this a thread in site stuf could be a goer

Flytipping and the pig ignorance of those who think nothing of tossing stuff out the window

Conversely, on my road and in the general area, near a school, it actually noticeably better, probably because no-one was around to chuck crap out of their car at dropoff/pick up times.

I drove along the M53 recently. Not one metre of the grass verge didn't have some sort of rubbish on it.

There's a group of volunteers near me who post daily on social media about the amount of litter they collect.
Amongst all the 118 bags of other detritus, they've collected 708 nitrous cannisters this year. I'm hoping to join them soon and do my bit.

Not sure about other parts but in Essex you can no longer just turn up at a local tip. You have to book a slot and some people are finding it hard to get one even two weeks in advance.

There are also some local councils that, despite already charging eye wateringly high council tax, are now charging additionally for green bins to be emptied and taking collections down to fortnightly. They then say- "well you have the option to take garden waste to the tip... "

I do agree that people are pigs for chucking litter everywhere and I would never do it, but cuts / changes to basic refuse services don't help!

In my area you can just turn up at the tip and there is still fly tipping and rubbish along the road side.

Completely agree. Our tip is the same. It would help if they were more accommodating. Our local council is even difficult about picking up the bags of litter that I collect.

There’s already the annual Great British Spring Clean, 17 March to 2 April 2023, run by Keep Britain Tidy.

www.keepbritaintidy.org

I get your point about takeaways, and agree that they account for a huge amount of litter. I'd levy a 10% tax on takeaways, on top of VAT, hypothecated so that it can only be used for litter clearance. And I'd have a law that all takeaway food containers must be biodegradable, so paper and cardboard instead of polystyrene and plastic, and charge a 50p deposit on drink bottles and cans, so that people had an incentive to take them back. And reinstate municipal water fountains so that people didn't need to buy something in a container whenever they got thirsty.

Ultimately though, it's down to the people who choose to chuck their litter out of the car window or just sling it on the ground. They're just lazy cunts who don't give a shit.

I keep a small pedal bin liner in my car. All my rubbish goes in it, and when there's a reasonable amount, I take it indoors and sort it into recyclable and ordinary rubbish and deal with it. It takes hardly any time at all to do. Even when I worked out in the community and everything I ate or drank during the working day generated rubbish in my car, I didn't leave crap everywhere.

I hate to say it, but I think it's mostly younger people who do it, too (not all, of course, many are very environmentally aware). I've never noticed someone my age (60's) dropping litter, but teens seem to be dreadful. I suppose my generation were brought up in the days of the "Keep Britain Tidy" campaign and public information films about litter in between tv programmes.

And when we've cracked the litter problem, can we start a campaign against those people who hoick up great gobs of phlegm and spit it out in public places?

This Is great and takes place in my local area. I was thinking more along the lines of a campaign to pressurise national/ local government/national highways to put in the resources for regular cleaning, bins, signs etc along with educating the general public.

I didn't know this was a thing until fairly recently and I was quite shocked.

MIL lives in a London borough, doesn't drive and is a keen gardener. She booked a slot at the tip at a time SIL was available to drive her to the tip and they loaded the car, mostly with garden waste but a few other bits too.

When they got there, it turned out that SIL's 4x4 was too tall to get under the barrier. As none of the waste was heavy, they decided to park up and walk in with it: no, not allowed to enter the tip on foot, cars only.

They brought it home again and next time I visited, I put it in my car and took it to my local tip. I rarely have anything good to say about the council (either of them), but my local tip is fantastic.

You don't need to make an appointment, you can take stuff in on foot, or in a bike trailer, at busy times they have someone at the end of the queue telling you the approximate wait time, the staff are friendly, polite, helpful and will lift heavy stuff for you. People tend to help each other with bulky, awkward stuff too, and the whole experience is as near to being pleasant as it can be.

If anyone from East Sussex waste management is reading, take a bow.

I live in rural Portugal. I saw a single piece of litter on the road last week - rare enough for me to remember it today.

We have noticed this recently too. I think it's partly the time of year in that the vegetation has not started to grow so the litter is more noticeable, and also that councils are cash-strapped so are putting money into things other than litter picking.

Throwing litter is so selfish and I just can't understand people who do it.

See my post above about the road repairer. He was late fifties.

Absolutely! There used to be TV ads. Bring them back.

Have any of you watched Paul Whitehouse and The State of our Rivers on BBC 2 ? As if the litter on roads wasn't depressing enough. But also how much of this crap ends up in our streams and rivers ?We need a hard hitting campaign.I am contacting the BBC,ITV,Channel 4 etc to see if they could produce a similar programme on litter.And any other organisation I can think of .RSPB, CRE whoever.I think we all feel so powerless because whist we can tidy our own small patch we can't safely litterpick on motorways and A roads,and the amount now is overwhelming.

I live in SW Scotland and its a huge problem. People dumping bags out if cars with food rubbish and nappies, it can be rubbish from a car journey or actual household rubbish dumped. I can't walk our dogs in certain areas because they raid the bags. My dogs ate a randomly dumped half loaf of bread in the middle of a country lane and I had to get them to the vets ASAP, get vomiting induced and cost me a fortune. Thankfully they were all okay. Our beaches are the pits at tourist season. People don't use the bins provided and leave all sorts of rubbish and do shits on the beach and cover it with a baby wipe ffs wtaf. Our national trust do a volunteer beach clean up every so often and empty the bins and it's awful what's collected. 😢

I wrote to McDonald's about the litter dropped in my seaside town and how it's, to a large extent, their packaging. They replied that they can't be held responsible for their customers actions.

Our town has a group called Turn the Tide focused mainly on litter in the sea and rivers, but a lot of our work is litter picks in town as this stuff often ends up in the sea. Hundreds of people of all ages are involved in making the situation better. It's encouraging and uplifting to see.

We also campaigned for lids on recycling bins to stop the crap blowing everywhere. We got the lids and it's made a big difference.

The council is very helpful and involved despite being utterly strapped for cash by this government that doesn't care about the rubbish in our towns and the sewage in our seas. If the Tories get in again next time, our environment is dead meat.

If we all got involved it would make a big difference.

The McDonald's by us has a team go out every so often litter picking. But they cover a short distance from the restaurant which is fair enough. They can't pick up every chip box in a 20 mile radius.

They can't pick it up themselves but they could pay a charge for someone else to do it as has been suggested above.

I was recently in NI and had several random conversations, one was that I said it’s lovely driving through the republic, beautiful greenery, the sides of the roads clean, tidy, no pot wholes, then all of a sudden you know your in the north, you don’t need a sign because you know your in England

It's sad because 20 years ago it was the other way round - the roads in NI were fantastic and it was when you crossed the border that the quality of roads declined. (By the way, NI is in the UK but categorically not in England :) )

I see no reason why secondary school pupils should be made to pick up litter. They are not the ones doing it, it's adult drivers!

Yes, I made this point further up. Councils are making it more and more difficult to get rid of rubbish. Collections are less frequent, often late, and they charge for green waste (and then often don't come).

I don't have an issue with the slot booking because you can book on the day and don't have to queue, but the issue is that the opening hours are short. Also if you live in a border area the councils get all precious about who uses their tip and if you live over the border you can't use theirs - completely ridiculous.

Where I am in Hampshire there is no joined up-ness anyway. The county council operates the tips. But the district councils have to deal with flytipping. So the county council is more than happy to reduce access to the tips because it doesn't have to deal with the consequences.

We need a national waste strategy, council's to do what we pay them for, and much better access to tips.

However, none of that excuses people throwing their food packaging out of car windows.

This! I was just saying that this morning, since lockdown the volume of fly tipping has got much worse.

The minute is is windy, there is so much rubbish strewn around the place

Park bins are overflowing with household waste

It's depressing

It's really bad round here to. We have a country lane, fast, leading up to an A road and people go along chucking things out. It's depressing.

Options are you contact your local authority and request a clean up. Ours are good at borough level, crap at county level. Depends on the road who is responsible.

The other is do local puck ups by residents. We have loads round here. There is even a group locally who do main roads. Funnily enough they don't close any lanes.... The road is a dusk carriageway but open to walkers, but the council won't clear unless they close a label. It's ridiculous.

We also have a lovely okd chso, 70's who cycles round the village, even into the local town, with a bag, picking up rubbish. He is incredible. And fit. He goes out every day unless it's really bad.

So there are solutions, but would dearly love those gits who throw the stuff out in the first place to have a talking to.