Stopping the litterbugs
March 24th 2009 Earlier this month Think Tank Policy Exchange and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) launched a new report – Litterbugs – to highlight the blight of littering in Britain, and to propose new means of cracking down on those responsible.
Since the 1960s the amount of litter dropped annually has shot up by 500%, and local authorities are now left to foot a bill of an estimated £500 million a year to clean it up. Alongside these costs, companies in heavily littered areas are losing business, and rubbish adds to an air of neglect in local communities, contributing towards increasing crime rates and anti-social behaviour.
“This report identifies the lack of any systematic logic in enforcement policy. Fines are an essential enforcement tool, and one which needs to be applied far more consistently than is currently the case,” says Bill Bryson, president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. “As this report also says, we need community buy-in to the fight against litter; we must build civic pride in clean and tidy environments, with communities competing to be spotless. Only then can we stop the exasperating and routine vandalism of a country so rich in natural, cultural and built heritage.”
“We know what works from abroad, where schemes have cut littering rates by up to 80%, and we know there are simple, cheap measures like the provision of more bins that can easily and quickly be put in place," says Ben Caldecott, Head of Policy Exchange’s Environment & Energy Unit. "Taking a few simple steps would reduce the clean-up costs that local authorities currently face."
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