This is rubbish.Literally.

What ever happened to the fines that were going to be given out for dropping litter? Has anyone ever been fined, people do it openly.The councils are not emptying bins and yet there’s so much fast food about now and nowhere to put the rubbish, when I was younger it was just fish and chip paper.I wish there could be a hard campaign on litter and dog poo on our streets, so many pick up dog poo and leave on your garden in little bags, yet there's signs saying there’s a £1000 fine close by. It’s a joke. Name and shame after first offence, when it hits pockets things will change.

We need a big national campaign on this one. There is an app called Fix My Street where you can report fly tipping and our council is pretty good at responding and getting in cleared. But people know this so they just leave mattresses, old furniture etc out for others to deal with. It doesn’t help that our nearest tip where you could take stuff to has closed. But we have a government which allows sewage in the sea and rivers so I’m not expecting anything to be done anytime soon.

I’m not sure more bins help as they often overflow , and they mean we’re never expected to deal with our rubbish ourselves . Fiona G says France is better than here , and I agree . The areas we visited there last Summer had no bins , rubbish had to be taken away with us , including dog bags . If we always expect someone else to deal with it things will never improve . There should be an expectation that we are all responsible for our own rubbish then it will be obvious if we don’t and there should be hefty fines . Extreme measures , but it has become an extreme problem .

The whole business of rubbish dumping drives me to distraction; as I walked past the traffic lights the other day a car pulled away and the girl in the passenger seat threw a large handful of tissues out of her wndow. The other wind up is people finishing a drink can and then sticking the can into a hedge. In my wildest moments I am in authority and have passed a law to say that anyone caught dropping litter has to eat it - every last bit. I drove on an A road yesterday and the beautiful verges and trees were full of litter all the way along.

Kate1949

We have contacted the council several times about this.

Our council eventually removed the bin that filled up like that. It has stopped people trying to bin their rubbish!

I’m part of a local litter picking group and the problem with the motorways is that a lane has to be coned off so that the litter can be cleared safely, which obviously annoys drivers . I’ve often picked on a junction on the m25 , the slip roads and roundabout . It’s mostly fast food containers , sandwich wrappers, drink cans and coffee cups . Plus empty water bottles with pee. For some reason drivers don’t want rubbish in their vehicles, so chuck it out the window. It’s worse around the traffic lights !!! And This is adults old enough to drive, not kids.
Littering makes me so angry. I was brought up to find a bin or take it home and my dc have been brought up the same

Well I'm not helping myself to cheer up because I'm now watching last night's programme by Paul Whitehouse about the state of our rivers!There are some amazing campaigners out there.I will continue to litterpick locally but it is very interesting about someone taking National Highways to court.I feel so strongly that I will start contacting as many agencies and official bodies as I can.Maybe if enough of us say enough is enough something may change.

Oh yes. Our council sent residents of our road a letter 'warning' us about fly tipping on the canal bank. Yet when we report it to them they said it's not their responsibility, it's The Canals Trust. So why send the letter then?

It's bad here too. I wish packaging could be severely reduced. Funny, I never see people littering but the amount they leave, they must just wait until backs are turned and then Bingo!
Does anyone remember the sketch from Beyond the Fringe about the London transport lost property.?
Based on the discovery of loads of pairs of lost trousers, the comedian was imagining how hard it would be to lose them when it's hard enough to get rid of a bag of orange peel.

I taught my DC to bring litter home but was rather horrified to find multiple sweet wrappers in their pockets.

The trouble is no one seems to take responsibility, there are councillors who report to the waste people, the road litter is meant to be for the council not the waste company, the town council are not allowed to do anything without going to the waste company…drives me mad!

Kate1949

We have contacted the council several times about this.

Send the photo to your local paper - I'm sure they will be eager to do something with it!

I’m in France for a couple of weeks, there is hardly any litter anywhere I am constantly astonished!
I want to start a tidy up campaign where I live, not just going out with a litter picker as it wouldn’t touch the surface but going directly to the responsible council departments etc. Apparently someone is taking National Highways to court over the litter on the motorways….
I constantly report online if I see litter but nothing gets done, there must be law to be found to get things moving.

Our village has a monthly litter pick, helped out by the scouts and Duke of Edinburgh award people, so very worthy. However, when they post on Facebook that they’ve picked up say 11 bin bags worth the comments are yippee and hooray!
Can people not see they should be celebrating a falling number, not more?

I have never understood the mindset of someone who is kind enough to feed the ducks and then throws the bag into the bushes, as happens around here.

There's no one group of people responsible for this. Although the older generation do tend to be much more responsible in this area.

But just watch people - young, middle aged, men, women... those careless, selfish people who don't give a damn.

We live near the Lake District, drives along the lakes are completely spoiled during and after school holidays. Car parks are made on verges where there never were. Camper vans are everywhere,they all seem to leave behind litter ,plastic water bottles barbeques that blow around when the wind gets up. and use the bushes as toilets.
A chap was taking his life in his hands the other day litter picking up the steep hill into our village. You could see where the food at been bought Macdonalds they must buy in the town and just finish on the hill and throw it away.
The other thing is we do not have bins on wheels for household rubbish but blue plastic bags the birds peck them open, a friend saw a bird with a chicken carcass the other day.
Part of the trouble was holiday cottages ask guests to put bags out when they leave for the Monday collection. As of this week, it has changed to Thursday. The birds will have a field day and all will look like a rubbish dump.

I live by the sea, and the prom and pier have regularly emptied bins every 20 yards, but still there are fish & chip and pizza boxes left next to seats, cans too.
But what upsets me most is the broken glass from discarded pub/restaurant glasses and alcohol bottles.

It does make you feel ashamed of our country doesn’t it….it’s embarrassing.

Our park does have bins, although not quite enough during the picnic season, and many people do leave their rubbish properly in the bins. The council is pretty good at emptying them. However, after a day when lots of people have been in the park, the seagulls and jackdaws manage to take stuff out of the full bins and spread it around. The park then looks awful and of course, the more untidy a place looks, the more people are inclined to drop more litter.

We need more bins and ones designed so that big birds can't get stuff out of them. Also I agree with those who argue for proper enforcement of the litter laws (but who will pay for that?...)

In the meantime, there are some of us who do pick up litter and recycle cans and bottles in our own bins. I am convinced that Red Bull is drunk by people who don't have a recycling bin at home as there are so many empty cans spread around the place.

sight, not site! 🙄

It has become a very real problem. We live opposite woodland and quite regularly people dump their rubbish, most recently a large bag full of old clothes, but often sofas, builders’ rubble and other items. Once reported to the local council, with a photo, it is usually collected within a couple of days, but in the meantime it is an ugly site, spoiling the countryside. As well as that there is litter, just discarded by people who have no respect for their surroundings or the community. It is very sad.

people are so thoughtless and selfish. The state of the beach down here in the south has to be seen to be believed when people leave at the end of theday... I wonder how they'll feel as climate change really begins to hit hard..and our precious irreplaceable seaside and countryside is destroyed.. still sleep walking I don't doubt...

Litter (and fly tipping) makes me so angry. There is no need for it whatsoever. I was brought up never to drop litter, as were my children and now my grandson too. We noticed a considerable increase in litter in this area when a McDonalds drive-thru opened - it's obvious that people just chuck their litter out of their car windows once they've finished eating. Says a lot about their clientele...

I'm a member of a voluntary litter picking group in our local area . We cleared a small ancient woodland and were amazed at what we found. Halves of cars, 3 piece suites, multitudes of mattresses, chairs, suitcases, toys, etc. As for the discarded half used tins of paint, brushes, tiles etc. The pile would be about 7' high x 12' and sometimes 25 bags of rubbish and that would be in 3 hours and a small group. Of course when we returned 6 months later we had to start from scratch. No hope when people won't even clean up on their own doorstep. It makes me so angry as I was always brought up to bring every scrap of litter home.

We have contacted the council several times about this.