Keep Britain Tidy - pick up your litter

When we were children not dropping litter was drummed into us. I doubt today’s litter louts would take any notice of a campaign.

I agree Dinahmo

It is more and more depressing to see even beauty spots littered with rubbish.
Will those who litter listen, though?

The other problem is that recycling large items costs quite a bit now and some disreputable firms which will collect and take away these items then dump them in woods, in farmers' fields etc.

My friend and I were out for a walk yesterday. About 6 teenagers were sitting in a shelter near some tennis courts. We had planned to stop there for a rest! All their bottles, cans, wrappers were thrown around their feet, on the grass or on the edge of the hard tennis court. There was an empty bin just 9ft away! We picked up some of the litter and binned it hoping they might join in but they just stared at us.

My son came back from a bike ride yesterday and said someone had dumped a large mattress on the roadside near a stream in a very quiet, pretty area. i don’t get that at all because there are two recycling centres within a 10 mile radius of that stream. If you are putting it in your car, you may as well take it there. They accept mattresses.

I can never understand the mindset of people who drop litter! What do they think is going to happen to it? Most probably they just don't think and have never been taught to think of others.
Way back in the days of the dinosaurs (aka the 1970s) I taught my children that 'no man is an island', that everything they did or didn't do had an affect on others. They have grown up and passed that ethos on to their own families. I believe the littering and fly-tipping that is so prevalent these days is the result of a couple of generations of lack of parental guidance. Even schools don't seem to have the authority these days over their pupils' behaviour - the Head of the local school, on receiving a complaint about the litter dropped in the High Street by pupils during lunch hour, was reported to have replied that the school had no control over its pupil's behaviour beyond the school gates.
I remember my partner once commiserated with a Council employee clearing up the mess left on the beach by youngsters the previous night. He said he didn't mind - it kept him in a job! Oh dear.
Is littering a 'disease' peculiar to the UK? It's a long time since I travelled but I remember the pristine cleanliness of Singapore in the '90s, and Holland which I visited regularly up until Covid always seemed so clean too.
Maybe National Service isn't such a bad idea after all in that it might just instil an idea of discipline 😉

Having said that there is little litter by the road sides in France we do now have a problem. Which annoys everyone. The govt. in its wisdom decided that it was unfair that a single occupier should pay the same (in their rates) as a family. So our taxes were reduced (slightly) and a payment for rubbish was instituted.

We now have large rubbish bins which can only be opened with a key card. The powers that be have decided that we should dispose of our waste rubbish every two weeks and they charge us accordingly. This means that people leave black plastic sacks by the side of the bins.

This is particularly bad in summer when there are holiday makers here. Theoretically they should be able to get a temporary card but they don't. As a consequence the communes have to pay for someone to go around picking up the sacks. I leave it to your imagination to the state of them, especially when the summer temperature is often in the 30s.

We have access (unlocked) to re-cycling bins and we also have a good system of waste disposal places, usually well organised.

If the possibility of an £80 fine doesn’t stop them I very much doubt a campaign would

It’s definitely not just the young, drivers are the worst offenders generally, otherwise why would our motorways and A roads have such disgusting verges?

I litter pick along a lovely country lane which is used as a rat run to avoid the main A road which runs parallel. I constantly pick up takeaway rubbish and drink cans and bottles thrown from cars. It is such a blight on a lovely area of countryside. No matter what campaigns are held there is an element in our country who do not care. My dearest wish is to creep up behind someone carefully hanging a full dog poo bag on the branch of a tree. I will not be responsible for what I do with my grabber!

One of the lunchtime jobs for first formers at our grammar school (1964) was litter duty.

You had to go round the school in pairs, and pick up any litter, inside and outside.

Cannot imagine what uproar there would be nowadays if similar rules applied, “What, in their lunch hour?”

Of course. back then no one queried it, not pupils or their parents. You just got on and did it.

Totally agree with your view Dinahmo! When our girls were little we instilled in them never to drop litter. “What if there’s no in mum?” … “Well put it in your coat pocket and bring it home with you”. I regularly emptied sweet wrappers or crisp packets out of their pockets as obviously they’d forgotten what was in there by the time they got home!

I wish they’d be a week of ‘Keep Britain Tidy’ to focus minds on this disgusting habit of littering. And no it’s not an ‘old biddy thing’ I’ve always felt littering to be antisocial and a stain on our beautiful country. Why are we so cavalier about litter?

Rant over.

*bin

*there’d
I ought to proof read …. 🤣

Made a real pig's ear of that, didn't you?

Join your local Tidy team- your town will have one. The less litter around the less inclined people will be to drop it. I agree with the problem being with drivers (young or old) and fast food outlets particularly.
I read somewhere that one fast food firm was asking for phone numbers to be printed on packages so the miscreants could be traced. Has anyone else heard about this?
In the good old days this was less of an issue due to there being no fast-food places.
Education is of course, also a key issue here.
I agree a campaign is long overdue but it would have to be on social media not on TV.

MissAdventure

Made a real pig's ear of that, didn't you?

Yep! 🤣

Maybe National Service isn't such a bad idea after all in that it might just instil an idea of discipline 😉

Taichinan I think you've hit on something there!
A National Litterpicking and Recycling Service - stout long gloves and litter pickers provided.

i got caught up behind some parents and children, aged about 9-11, coming out of school recently.
most kids were given sweets etc to eat and threw the wrappers down on the ground, or just let them fall, unconcerned.
all in front of the parents, who said nothing.

Germanshepherdsmum

When we were children not dropping litter was drummed into us. I doubt today’s litter louts would take any notice of a campaign.

So do I.

It would be those in favour of such a campaign who care about our environment who would be picking up after them.

When my son was four, we were walking around Pen Ponds in Richmond Park, Surrey, with a friend and her son. He (my son) dropped a sweet wrapper. I told him to pick it up and he ran off laughing - with the other boy. So I made him walk round the circumference of the pond picking up every scrap of litter.

... thing is, he carried on for a few weeks doing that in the street or wherever we were - picking up other people's litter because I hadn't given him 'the lecture' at the end so he thought he had to continue doing it .

Imagine if one day this week the whole country went out and filled just one carrier bag with litter! I suppose landfill couldn’t cope.

Urmstongran

Imagine if one day this week the whole country went out and filled just one carrier bag with litter! I suppose landfill couldn’t cope.

I have a stone planter outside my house filled with heather - we are on a main thoroughfare.

After the weekend there is nearly always some litter dumped in it among the heather, food packaging, plastic bottles, drinks cans - even cigarette ends (ugh).

I used to have hanging-baskets, but they also got stuff dumped in them which damaged the flowers so I don't bother anymore - and others in the road say the same.

It's a shame because we are a tourist town (Cotswolds) and the street used to be a riot of colour in the summer - I've even had tourists take snaps of my blooms outside my house on one occasion. But fewer people are bothering now - also, some of the hanging baskets were ripped off and dumped on the road - for a 'laugh' I suppose.

This once vibrant street is now looking rather dull. And there's lots of litter dumped in the town centre where volunteers regularly have to have a clean up.

We often identify the culprits among ourselves, but are not allowed to name and shame on the local FB noticeboard, although some are just people passing-through.

... and if you complain about it on the same notice-board someone will point out that there aren't enough rubbish bins. As far as I can recall, most towns and villages don't have a huge amount of rubbish bins - but people used to pocket their litter and take it home... imagine that!

... it seems like society is slowly decaying.

You must be joking, people have enough to do terrorising neighbourhoods, stabbing people, stealing etc. etc. without bothering about picking up litter.

Our town council pay for Saturday and Sunday morning clean ups in the town centre, they are finished by the time the shops open, and it’s spotless. It makes such a difference to the way tourists view the town so they keep coming, which is the payback.

I wonder what their houses look like!
Just tonight a group of men were talking and smoking on the newly paved area outside the town hall. Cigarette buts were thrown down and stamped out. That's it.

Plastic drink bottles are everywhere and takeaway boxes. Why?

My DGS started a "let's tidy our school" litter pick with some of his pals when in P2. He even won a prize from the school.
But kids higher up the school mocked him so he lost heart.