Litter Rant

[Blue Hills]

Most pathetic I think is the ton of junk that can be left in a local London park after a sunny weekend of picnics.
I mean the folk have clearly brought all the stuff there, some only a short walk from the car that brought it, so how much bother is it to take the lesser amount back?
Sadly a lot of the perpetrators are clearly young folk.
If I were mayor I would create a litter hit squad with the right to issue very substantial on-the-spot fines.
With a small amount of seedfunding from the London boroughs it would then be for a fair old while self-funding from fines, so serious and widespread is the littering.
It could be a small crack squad - maybe as few as 10 folk - who could appear at any time in any bit of London. In their eco-fuelled batmobile.
All the squad would wear body cams for protection and evidence and folk would have a right of appeal.
With a heavier fine if it was clearly proved that their appeal was mischievous.
No-one expects the litter SAS.

edit - the SASsquad would of course save the boroughs a fair old bit of money from their teams having to go out every Monday cleaning stuff up. So this could be factored in to the initial funding.

 

[Beebo]

In my experience it’s a young male issue.
For some reason males between the ages 18-30 seem more prone to chucking litter.

It’s some weird anti society thing.

And litter creates litter, if an area is already messy people will be more likely to drop their rubbish.

 

[Venod]

It annoys me beyond all reason, it's the deliberately wilful nature of littering that I find so despicable.
We wandered back from a charity fundraising coffee and cake type thing last weekend, this was our 'haul' in a little bit over a mile on a country lane

I always give encouragement to members of the public litter picking, it makes the surroundings look a lot better, I don't understand how the people littering and fly tipping can't see this.

There is a road I ride and I have seen it rendered impassable by cars because of fly tipping.

 

[Beebo]

Fly tipping is a real problem on the Kent / London borders.
The local councils make it more expensive and complicated for businesses to dispose of commercial waste so fly tipping occurs where unscrupulous operators just dump the stuff.

 

[Blue Hills]

Fly tipping is a real problem on the Kent / London borders.
The local councils make it more expensive and complicated for businesses to dispose of commercial waste

ditto domestic waste - the increase in charges at local tips is massively counter productive.
Am not defending fly tipping of course.

 

[slowmotion]

It was something that was dinned into me from early childhood. Littering was several notches worse than being a paedophile in those days. Not everybody is taught that. " The Council pays people to pick it up."

 

[Supersuperleeds]

Went to Lowestoft the other week and it was really clean, no litter at all. They had bins everywhere. Sad state of affairs that this is the exception.

I carried an empty coke can in my back pocket yesterday for 15 miles until I put it in a recycling bin. I forgot it was there until I sat down at the station and thought what is that sticking in my back

 

[Badger_Boom]

ditto domestic waste - the increase in charges at local tips is massively counter productive.
Am not defending fly tipping of course.

Agreed, but people seemed to do it before local authorities decided to start charging.

 

[Saluki]

I remember the ‘keep Britain tidy’ campaign, when I was a kid. However, I was brought up to keep hold of litter until I found a bin.
People are oddly proprietary about their bins. Last night I saw a man lambasting a young lad for putting a chocolate wrapper in a wheelie bin, out for the bin men. Told him to take it out and put it in a ‘council bin’. The lad did not, as far as I could tell, fish his wrapper from the bin, he just rode away on his bike.

Often, when I am out with my dogs, I womble as I go. Especially in the area that I live in. Get a carrier bag worth most days. It’s my random act of the day.

 

[oldwheels]

Friends of mine lived very near an unofficial camp site with no facilities. As soon as their bin was emptied they had to take it in as if left it was very soon filled with rubbish from tidy campers leaving no room for their own rubbish. Can’t win.

 

[sheddy]

A nice day for a thread resurrection.
I pick up other peoples litter when walking, but not when cycling.

 

[Drago]

If I see people dropping little I give them a choice:

Pick it up, or I'll make them lick it up.

So far everyone has chosen the former.

 

[Electric_Andy]

If I littered in a public/busy space, I couldn't face the embarrassment. For me it would be the equivalent of hanging my bare bum out of the window. Makes you think what else these litterbugs do in their lives if they have no shame

 

[Drago]

In my experience of many years in the plod, folk who are happy to casually break minor laws usually have some more significant piece of law breaking lurking in the background and in many cases it didn't take much digging to find it.

If you or I were bad 'uns we would keep out heads down and wouldn't draw attention to ourselves with such public minor misdeeds, but this sort just can't help themselves. I never did figure out if it was some kind of psychological compulsion or whether they simply weren't very bright.