Cleaning up Britain: in the frontline of the fight against rubbish

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/30/litter-rubbish-keep-britain-tidy

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Villiers Street in the West End would be London’s foulest road if not for Hasan Akin. He and a team of seven cleaners collect up to 70 large sacks of cigarette butts, crisp packets, chewing gum and fast-food litter every day.

The 500-metre street, which runs between the Embankment and Charing Cross station, has 11 fast-food joints, three pubs, a nightclub, cafes, corporate offices and private homes.

Last week Akin and his team counted many thousands of bits of chewing gum stuck to the road, found false teeth in the gutter and worked around the clock with rubbish lorries and street washers to collect syringes, plastic bags and even a dead fox.

Meanwhile, in rural Kent, a farmer reported last week that he had lost a contract worth £16,000 after broken glass, probably hurled into a field from a passing car, was found in his oat harvest; prams, fridges and carpets were dumped on a quiet road in Dover; and hedgerows around Appleby, near Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire, were found to be thick with rubbish. In four years, residents have voluntarily collected more than 2,400 sackfuls of fast food and other rubbish dumped in nearby lanes.

New research by environmental groups and the national Tidy Britain group suggests that grassroots anger is mounting as evidence shows that Britain is one of the most litter-blighted countries in Europe – its parks, verges, wasteland and housing estates fouled by packaging, cigarette ends, drinks cans and bottles.

With local authority spending slashed by 40% over five years, rural and urban councils have warned of growing blight and a buildup of social and health problems.

“Rates of fast-food littering and fly-tipping are on the rise and people find this really offensive. We are now on the verge of a crisis,” said Richard McIlwain, the head of Tidy Britain. “We seem to have more litter than anywhere else in the world. The risk is that over the next five years local authorities will come under even more financial pressure and will have to cut back on services further. If so, we will see environmental degradation across large areas of Britain and people’s sense of wellbeing will decline.”

Sir Andrew Motion, the former poet laureate who is now president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), warned last week that the countryside was sinking in litter.

“The problem of litter in our beautiful countryside is appalling and dismaying. Without urgent action, the generation that follows us will find the beauty of England submerged in garbage ‘too thick-strewn to be swept up’, just as Philip Larkin prophesied,” he said.

Motion’s words were echoed by the American writer and anti-litter campaigner David Sedaris, who this year told a House of Commons communities and local government select committee that Britain was “like a trash can … You have to go deep into eastern Europe to find it so bad. I have never seen anything like this in Japan or France. It’s obviously a cultural problem,” he said. “It’s bad for the spirit to walk through filth. Littering is important. It’s disgraceful. Why should everyone live in a teenager’s bedroom? Peek into a hedge here and it’s like a trash can. In London you’ll see trees with bags of dog crap under them.”

Government figures show that the number of flytipping incidents leapt by 20% to 852,000 last year and that council funding for street cleaning has fallen for the fourth year running.

The most recent survey, of 7,200 sites in 45 areas, by Keep Britain Tidy found that cigarette ends and empty packets were by far the biggest blight. Nearly 30% of “unacceptable” sites were in deprived areas, where the density of people and takeaway restaurants is usually greatest, against 3% in wealthy areas.

“At a time when councils face difficult choices about services in the light of reducing budgets, they are having to spend almost £1bn a year on tackling litter and flytipping,” said the Local Government Association’s environment spokesman, Peter Box.

“This is money that would be better spent on vital frontline services. Litter and flytipping is environmental vandalism – it’s unpleasant, unnecessary and unacceptable.”

Last week Tidy Britain, which has had its £5m a year government grant withdrawn, called for £1,000 on-the-spot fines for flytippers who dump bulky household goods and for a national campaign to make littering socially unacceptable. It joined a groundswell of Britain’s 671 registered voluntary litter groups to call for a national action plan.

“We have legislation that does not work. Litter and flytipping falls between different departments who have taken their eye off the ball. Defra [the Department for Food and Rural Affairs] has delayed for a year regulations allowing councils to fine car drivers who throw litter from their vehicles,” said Sam Harding of the CPRE. “We need a national action plan that changes people’s behaviour. Littering is a cultural problem which needs long-term messaging.”

Observers are divided on who litters and why. In Lincolnshire, the Appleby voluntary anti-littering group says only a few people regularly throw rubbish from cars, often at the same points. “We find all kinds of bizarre things, including once a horse’s head,” said Ian Cross of Appleby Litter Pickers. “But there are definitely hotspots as you come in or go out of the village, or about 10 minutes from a fast-food restaurant. People who litter are well aware they do it.”

However, the CPRE thinks one in five people now litter indiscriminately. “All sorts of people litter for different reasons. Some people leave coffee cups on window sills; others cannot find bins. Others can be standing next to a bin and ignore it. It’s inexplicable,” said Harding.

Equally, said Harding, public bodies such as the Highways Agency and Network Rail are failing in their statutory responsibility to keep their networks clear of litter, while flytipping has significantly increased since householders began to be charged for the removal of garden waste.

Councils have saved some costs, but these may have been more than countered by the extra cost of cleaning up rubbish-strewn verges.

Back in Villiers Street, which costs Westminster council nearly £1m a year to clean, a new anti-litter charity, Hubbub, has teamed up with the social enterprise group Gumdrop to try new techniques to persuade people to bin their waste or take home their chewing gum.

For six months the street will have bins with recorded messages that play as you pass them, artwork and posters.

“Everyone wants clean streets. There is not necessarily more litter than a decade ago, but it is now less socially acceptable,” said Richard Beddoe, Westminster council’s cabinet member responsible for street cleaning.

“We have to change the culture. Fines do not work. They haven’t reduced the amount of litter or raised revenues. Westminster’s budget for street cleaning is protected, but we cannot just employ more people like Hasan. We have to persuade people to change their habits.

“It used to be socially acceptable to drink and drive. Now it’s not. It’s still acceptable to drop chewing gum. Littering should be made socially unacceptable in the same way. The big stick does not work. The goal has to be a complete change of attitude.”

LITTER IN NUMBERS

30 million tonnes of litter are collected in the UK every year at a cost of £1bn.

700,000 bags of rubbish are removed from England’s road network every year.

28% of people admit that they drop litter.

63,000 fines for littering were handed out by local councils in England 2012.

86% of people say that littering is disgusting.

75% of the 7,200 sites surveyed had cigarette butts.

852,000 incidents of flytipping were recorded last year, an increase of 20%.

Source: Keep Britain Tidy.