h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What can we do about litter?

I'm asking this on the Forum instead of 'Ask', because I don't just want a lot of moans about "yoof of today" etc. What practical steps can be taken to eradicate litter? Why are some towns tidier than others? Is it a national thing? Do other countries have less or more of a problem?

We need more dustbins, less packaging, and a sense of respect.

Here in France there seem to be a much greater number of street cleaners employed than I see in the UK.

Of course that costs money - you should just see what I pay in taxes every year! But it does mean that the streets appear cleaner.

I often wonder if that exacerbates the problem in some ways? It's as if it makes it ok to chuck litter because you know someone will be along to pick it up.

That could be part of the problem. I think there's an attitude of 'it doesn't matter', possibly because people genuinely don't care, and also because they think it will be cleaned up.

My little town wassn't particualryly littery, but thats mainly (I think) because it's (a) a coastal and touristy town and (b) we've got some poor sap pootling around on a green rideable hoover every morning about 5.00am hoovering up the detritus from the previous night's revels

Well... that theory held good until last year, when we were told by the council we have to recycle as much as we can (which I've nothing against) and also put our non recyclable stuff in specially purchased purple sacks. The recycling bags are free. The purple bags are just under a quid a bag if you need to use more than the standard 25 bags they dole out grudgingly every 6 months.

HOWEVER: each house is restricted to one bag of "Purple" rubbish, and each house is equally restricted to 2 bags of recyced stuff per week
(despite the fact we're encouraged to recycle)

Which is all well and good if there's only one householder per house; where I live, one house can be turned into upto 5 separate dwellings, each with its own householder!

The upshot? The residents have got wise to the restrictions, so most of them sort of dump however many bags of rubbish they've accumulated- recycled in their nice transparent sacks and non recyclable in their expensive purple sacks in in one big amorphrous heap in the middle of the equivalent of the town square every Monday night, in time for Tuesday mornings collection I'm one of the few who doesn't, simply because carrying them out to my bit of kerb is difficult enough for me to achieve, let alone lug them the 150yds to the communual heap

Our council's solution is to ensure the Bin Men only collect the equivalent of the town's square populations bags.

The rest sort of lurk around for a few days until the poor bugger with the Rideable green hoover disposes of them either in the bins or puts them in his trunk This happens more in summer, needless to say

I have this theory that if we all dumped our bags on the Council Office's doorstep for a few weeks every Monday evening the problem could be solved remarkably quickly

However, the drawback is that as the Municipal Offices are covered 24/7 by CCTV cameras

Sorry if I'm ranbling, or there's more typos than usual, but I'm just back home after day surgury (more injections into the spine -AGAIN) and I'm still shaking off the effects of whatever it was they put into me as sedative to prevent me from kicking the surgeon in the goolies whilst he was injecting me.

Hope you feel better soon - gentle

When I worked for the Forest Service, we had an empirical theory that rubbish bins encouraged litter - 90% of the rubbish deposited by visitors to forests was found in a radius of about 2m around litter bins.

Thanks for the hug.....but at the moment I feel Remarkably Better - I'm stuffed to the gills with steroids, LOTS of local anesthetic and the whateveritwas I was given as sedative ("40 times stronger than valium, thats lovely" said the Welsh anesthetatistanesthatist - help!! I can't stop spelling)

I'll need as many hugs as I can get by around Thursday when the dope wears off and reality kicks in tho. Just in time for my audition.

But a dictionary might be a nice idea, in the meantime

I think it's those **** kids.

It makes me seethe when I see people littering. So much so that I actually one day found myself fantasising that I had magical powers, and I could curse people who littered so that all their accumulated litter would bounce along after them calling "Wait for me! Wait for me!" in a voice like that mobile phone in the advert!

I'll sit quietly and wait for the men in white coats now. But it made me feel so much better that day!

As well as littering, I get wound up by the thought that, as a dog owner, I probably get tarred with the same brush as the selfish B's who DON'T clean up after their dogs!

Deb

Here in the Algarve, there are a huge amount of apartment blocks. To save having the bin men collecting from each building, they have blocked off all the old rubbish chutes in all of the buildings. Every street has an 'eco-island', a series of about 7 normal sized metal dustbins in a row, each of which has a skip sort of thing underneath. Some are for normal rubbish, and one each for paper, plastic packaging and glass. These are emptied every night by different lorries. Any larger rubbish (sofas, fridges etc) are left at the side and collected daily too. They are also powered by little solar panels and chirp out a cheerful 'Good Morning/Afternoon' and 'Thank You' when you put stuff in them!

There is also a waste bin on just about every lamppost. Every day, teams of street rubbish collectors with bins on trolleys go along, clean the kerbsides and emptying the bins. There are also teams of mainly elderly ladies who clear out the rubbish and weed the flowerbeds on all of the roundabouts and central reservations on the dual carriageways.

About once a month, a mechanical road sweeper goes along and hoovers and washes the sides of the roads. Whereas in the UK, they just ignore streets that have parked cars along them, here a man with a blower goes in and out between every car, blowing the refuse into the middle of the road where the road sweeper picks it up.

For all of this, we pay the equivilent of about 100 pounds a year in council tax.

There is a lot of civic pride here and people actually care about their environment. Obviously, the municipal councils have taken charge of these arrangements and do it well. With tourism as a major draw here, they really have to keep the place clean to encourage visitors. This is perhaps not a huge priority in some towns in the UK, but it does show that it can be done.

More bins, council street cleaners reinstated and a duty on owners of shops to have to deal with the litter from their establishment in the vacinity (E.g., all the empty burger boxes and fizzy drink cartons found littering the street the few hundred yars each side of whatever generic burger joint it is...) We live on a busy little street with cafes, take aways etc., and used to have road sweepers every day during the summer months 9 (when tourists are about in town). For some reason they did away with this, probably couldn't afford it as a direct consequence of them putting th ecouncil tax up to £1200 per annum and doing away with 50% of wheelie bin collections in an effort to encourage people to put loose pieces of paper in open topped plastic boxes out on the street so the wind and drunken idiots who wonder down the road later at night can have some fun kicking them up and down the road I wonder if someone ought to tell the council about all the vacant space at the back where they could put municiple bins

In Coventry they have instigated on the spot fines for littering - needless to say there was a front page story in the local rag after some woman was fined after her grand-daughter threw a crisp bag out the window.

Next day I was amazed when the letter pages were full of people saying "too right!"

The other day I was by McDonalds and a brand new hatchback pulls up containing 4 burberry wearing youths. They eat their meals, throw the rubbish out the windows, the bin is 10 yards away, and roll a joint, before revving up and driving away.

You never have a machine gun when you need one do you ?

I generally find it rahter useful carrying my shotgun with me at all times... You never know when theere's a zombie army on its way, and its certainly one way to 'teach the youth of today' a lesson they won't forget With people throwing things out of car windows I just don't understand... when I'm travelling by public transport, taxis, trains, buses underground, if I create some rubbish, say an empty packet of cigarettes, a bit of tissue empty chrisp packet or sandwich wrapper/bag, then I always put it into either my pocket on my jacket till I next get to a bin, or as is more often the case, stick it into the comparment on my rucksack for putting in to my home bin when I'm next home Surely its more effort for them to chuck it out the window rahter than just leaving it in the car till next time they sort out the car

> I actually one day found myself fantasising that I had magical powers, and I could curse people who littered so that all their accumulated litter would bounce along after them calling "Wait for me! Wait for me!" in a voice like that mobile phone in the advert!<

That's a *wonderful* fantasy! And from now on I'll probably share it, if you don't mind. In fact, I probably won't be able to stop myself from sharing it.

My own littering fantasy has been that people convicted of littering would serve a one-day jail sentence ... the catch being that the jail cell would be one of the old-fashioned cells consisting of just nothing but iron bars, and it would be located right smack in the middle of what's now euphemistically called a "land fill" where I come from ... formerly known as the "city dump," complete with rats and other vermin that are attracted to trash. If people love to litter so much, let them enjoy the world they're creating to the fullest! Cruel and inhumane? I don't think so!

>I generally find it rahter useful carrying my shotgun with me at all times... You never know when theere's a zombie army on its way, and its certainly one way to 'teach the youth of today' a lesson they won't forget<



A man after my own heart! One just can't be too prepared.

MorningEvadne,

Here, have another hug! Hope you're better today...

Meanwhile, the ladies of your town could all wear Burkhas whilst putting rubbish on the town hall steps!

Novo

H'mmm - now there's a thought to conjure with Novo.

I find that asking people to put whatever they just dropped in the bin instead *usually* embarrasses them enough for them to actually do it - although this is facilitated if one can point to an appropriate receptacle for it at the same time.

Amazingly, nobody has ever given me much grief for doing this - not even scary-looking yoof. Probably too busy cringing that some sad woman is threatening their image by talking to them.

More bins, though, would be a definite plus.

>More bins, though, would be a definite plus.<

I have what is, to me at least, an interesting take on this, albeit perhaps a bit of a geographical digression. Here in the US, the trend has been toward fewer trash recepticals/bins in public parklands rather than more. At first glance, this sounds like a litter disaster in the making. It did to me at least. Especially because I have "adopted" a section of a public biking/hiking trail near my home, which means that I periodically stroll the trail and pick up litter. When several litter bins along my section of the trail were suddenly removed, I immediately protested, unsuccessfully, on the grounds that my volunteer "job" would become more onerous. Surprisingly, however, that turned out not to be the case. The amount of litter that people left behind did not change appreciably at all. I was shocked. This suggests to me that people who litter will do so even if bins are provided, and those who don't litter will continue not to litter even if bins are not available ... this is the "pack it in, pack it out" line of thought.

The underlying reason for the removal of bins, incidentally, is to reduce the need for paid public employees to go around emptying them, thus saving (at least theoretically) taxpayers' dollars that pay the saleries of such people.