Locally Barton Civic Society’s litter-pick has been postponed for the time being owing to the extreme cold and snow cover (which makes identifying the litter items difficult). This activity was linking in with a national initiative, across the country over the coming weekend, unlikely now to happen anywhere as a result of the weather. Litter is a huge problem in modern society, we all know why there is more potential for package littering to occur but this country has been very poor at ‘doing something about it’. The anti-litter legislation of New Labour’s time has never been enforced – legislation without positive enforcement is worse than no legislation at all. Local authorities have responsibilities in this regard but with drastically reduced funding a general obligation to litter-pick roadside verges gets pushed down the order of priorities, and why wouldn’t it. Urban areas tend to employ litter-pick operatives (a much better alternative than the machines which cannot get in the ‘nooks and crannies’) with the result that roadside verges tend to be more of an eyesore than city streets. Voluntary litter-pickers usually find that most roadside litter is likely to have come from cars and/or lorries – our strong sense of private space (‘my space’) dictates that my nice car should not be ‘littered’ so transfer to the public space about which I care less.
Great strides of progress have been made in refuse collection and recycling but the casual littering of roadside spaces and fly-tipping are a scare on the landscape and a comment on modern society. And what use is an annual litter-pick, only by virtue of it being better than nothing, to really make a difference the activity needs to be done regularly.
And just in case we choose to think that this is just an ‘English Disease’ the above picture (taken from Wikipaedia) was taken in the Swedish capital city. As evidence from ‘Blue Planet’ showed recently this is a global epidemic.