When did we get so dirty?

We live in an isolated spot, but even here I find rubbish down the lane and it is always fast food rubbish: sandwich wrappers, cans etc. I take a bag and pick them up as it riles me so to see them among the snowdrops.

I wonder what is going on in these people's minds - they drive all the way out here, presumably because they like the beautiful scenery (there's nothing else here and it's en route to nowhere!) and then they violate it.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten - Bubble Gum Alley in San Luis Obispo in California. It's over 70 foot long and 15 foot high, coated with the stuff, some of it dating back to the 1950s. Some people seem to find it attractive - it just made me feel very queasy

Yeagh!!! ? The one in Germany wasn't even colourful and couldn't be remotely described as an art form, but they're both disgusting!

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11987616/Seattles-famous-chewing-gum-wall-dismantled-by-cleaning-crews.html

GreyDuster I think it's an art form. I gather there is one in the market in Seattle.

Talking of chewing gum, Willow, the most bizarre and disgusting thing I ever came across was in a theme park in Germany. Adjacent to where people queued to go onto the roller coaster ride was a low wall about ten feet long. There was hardly an inch of it that wasn't covered in chewing gum which had obviously been deposited over a long period by people waiting to go on the ride. I presume you can't chew and scream at the same time, so get rid of the gum first. We visited this place twice and I couldn't understand why no-one ever made any attempt to clean it off!

If you think Britain is untidy look at places in Greece and Madeira where I have seen rubbish dumped into gulleys and storm drain valleys plastic trash bags old fridges etc.

In comparison we are not that bad. I abhor even casual litter droppers though.
My kids always handed me such rubbish to put in my pockets, but now niether of them just dump it .
Fly tipping is another problem altogether. Very hard to stop or find out who has dumped it.

We often drive down the A1 and comment at the amount of plastic wrapped round trees - presumably it must blow off lorries and wagons as I'm sure no one deliberately dumps it on the roadside. It used to be cassette tape which somehow ended up in the hedgerow. I've just walked back from town in our lovely historic city and looked at the amount of chewing gum stuck to the pavement - how on earth does so much accumulate in one area - do people spit it out so it lands in a 'clean' patch!

We have a 'scrapper' who comes around. Very useful. Our lovely neighbour is a heating and air conditioning engineer and frequently comes home with bits of boilers and air con units in his van. He leaves them at the bottom of his drive and they are gone within hours sometimes, but one day, there was a knock on our door and a young man asked if we knew our neighbours very well. I said yes. He asked if the complicated piece of metal and piping he had left on his garden just off the pavement was scrap or some kind of garden sculpture as they didn't want to take it if it was! When I'd stopped laughing I said no, I was almost certain there wouldn't be a problem. My neighbour said perhaps he should start a sideline!

Scrap man! We used to have one every week or so with his horse drawn cart when I was a child in Watford. I was most surprised to see one in Nuneaton last year - though with a van not a horse!

The main problem in our area is the broken furniture that is left outside homes. The scrap man comes and collects it now and again but it looks unsightly. Everyone dumps their stuff on the kerb. I was walking down a terraced road the other day and the rubbish was piling onto the roadway the path was blocked completely. There is just no way to remove bulky stuff. The council charge £14 or £7.00 for concessions and no one can or wants to pay. This should be a free council service after all it is a health risk.

I agree NanaandGrampy! We live in a small village way out in the Scottish countryside. Every couple of months my DH goes up and down our road laden with bin bags and picks up all the bottles, cans, cartons, takeaway rubbish and sweetie wrappers that drivers have tossed out of their car windows. Just after New Year someone towed an old caravan to the edge of our village and set it alight. People use our beautiful countryside as a dumping ground.
My kids were brought up to always put litter in a bin and if there isn't one handy - bring it home. They always followed our example.

I don't think where I live in Scotland is too bad but since the storms that hit this area in Dec/Jan the countryside has looked very scruffy. I even saw a red bucket halfway up a tree, presumably deposited there by floodwater. Sixty caravans were swept downriver from a caravan site and obviously all that debris has landed up somewhere, too.

When I visit my son in London, I do confess I am always taken aback at how scruffy places look. Even some houses that must be worth high six-figure sums or even seven figures look neglected and sad.

It's depressing and unnecessary. Good idea about printing car reg numbers on takeaway bags but that's only a small fraction of the litter dropped - cans, bottles, plastic plastic plastic, all from different sources. As others have said you can report it to the council who are obliged to pick it up. You can also join your local litter group (or set one up) and volunteer to do regular picks. I also think we should be putting pressure on manufacturers to develop more biodegradable materials as I despair of changing people's behaviour, and the law is pointless if it's not enforceable. Our beautiful countryside is disappearing under a carpet of rubbish.

I feel increasingly depressed and angry at the amount of litter in the grass verges and around my home town ,and in this country in general.Time was it was a problem in the town centre but it's spread out into the surounding villages and countryside and it's time we got tough.Fines should be much stricter and implemented promptly.
Apparently in March there's a 'clean for the Queen ' weekend in honour of the Queen's 90th birthday,encouraging as many people to go out litter picking and tidying their environment.But much more needs to be done to educate the next generation,and to change this selfish mentality of throwing rubbish around.I may be foolish but I have never shied away from asking someone to pick up litter if they drop it near me,and if they refuse finding the nearest bin and shaming them.

Tizliz we regularly brought the bag(s) home in the car if there was no bin, which was more often than not. Where we live is great for dog walking. We've got farmers fields with paths across and around them and stiles to the country lane which is over a mile long and has a tarmac path with deep grass verges. There's even a grass patch before you get to the fields. We used to have 5 bins across all these great options for walking your dog and now we have none. Gradually over 2 years they were removed one by one.

NfkDumpling that's disgusting and unacceptable.

It's the condition of major roads which amazes me. So much rubbish. The last time we went to London and were caught up in the tail back for the North circular I had plenty of time to watch the rats foraging in the mess at the side of the road. Next to houses. Then my DH told me what was really in the half filled drinks bottles! Yuck!

I don't believe people who drop/jettison rubbish actually believe they're doing anything wrong - it's the out of sight out of mind mentality. Once something has been thrown away, it's ceased to exist. Nothing to do with them.

There is a forest walk near me and at the car park is a poo bag dispenser but no bin. The bin is ½ mile into the walk - most dog walkers only go 100 yards, once the dog has done its poo it is straight back to the car. So IF they did pick up the poo where are they going to put the bag? In their car ........!!

Though the problem of general rubbish is not too bad here in the Highlands it does get worse in the summer because the rubbish bins get full too quickly so people just pile the rubbish round the bin. I certainly would not want to be a bin man (or perhaps I should say bin person). It has definitely got worse since the council was forced to take down the signs saying 'no overnight parking', so camper vans etc park overnight in the lay-bys. Wimpy council.

ad as a dog owner a couple of years ago I wondered why other owners did this too, I so I Googled it. Apparently it's because the owner doesn't want to carry the bag around on a long walk. The idea was to collect the bag on the way back and then get rid of it. Of course, lots forget, but then information started doing the rounds that as the bags were biodegradable, they could be left to fall apart. Of course, only some bags are biodegradable, but now the countryside is decorated with bags of poo.

annodomini Quite agree - adorning the trees with "strange fruit" takes some figuring out. To be charitable I often collect it myself, thinking perhaps the dog walker concerned took a different route home than expected - however I think it is just utter laziness.

"Take your litter home" sadly , seems to have gone out with the ark.

To me the most disgusting littering of all (dog foul being the worst in my book, worth a separate thread!) is the sight of bottles half full of what I initially too to be Irn Bru littering the side of the motorways - apparently common practice by some lorry drivers when "taken short."

Hope one day the inevitable happens. Will bring a giggle in A&E no doubt.

Last year we visited St Perersburg and we were amazed how clean every where was and it was nothing to do with police etc, it was because people used litter bins.

It was also the same in Vancouver five years ago. In Vancouver the traffic wardens also take on the role of Litter wardens and you can be fined on the spot. We saw a young girl get a ticket for dropping a cigareete end on the ground. Every morning we saw the street cleaner machines out washing streets and pavements. Most impressed

I think its a symptom of the 'me me me' generation who take what they want without regard.

It's always someone else's fault never theirs.

They have a 'right' to a long list of things without the need to work to get whatever that might be.

There's a common mindset that 'someone else will do it'.

I'm just sad about the world today :-(

I struggle to understand the mentality of dog owners who, having scooped the excrement and bagged it, then hang the bags on trees and bushes alongside the track.

We could do with an up to date TV campaign about littering. Children get taught about it, so maybe it's the adults that need reminding. On wild life programmes we often see the results of littering, it just needs something much more wide spread.