Green Councillor Kevin Pressland is a passionate campaigner for nature and the natural environment. His understanding of the threats faced by the natural world is based on expertise gained from a 40-year career in horticulture, garden design and sustainable land management.
Litter is a constant burden to local authorities, scarring to the eye and certainly damaging to wildlife, causing insurmountable harm, stress, pain and sometimes death.
The government should take more action to reduce packaging, and not allow themselves to be constantly influenced by the interests of the packaging industry in preference to the public, environment and other creatures.
Thirty million tonnes of litter are collected from our streets every year – enough to fill four Wembley Stadiums. Litter costs in the UK were £669 million in 2022, costing each household £30 per year according to government statistics.
The most commonly littered item is cigarette butts on 79% of sites. The next three most littered items, all ‘food and drink on the go’ related, are confectionery packs (found on 60% of sites), soft drink bottles and cans (52%) and fast-food related litter (33%).
At least one item of litter is found on every 50 cm of beach.
In rural areas particularly along roads and nearby hedgerows, layers of litter are developing due to decades of people in vehicles chucking their rubbish out the window and or in laybys. In the wider countryside, where people want to enjoy beautiful areas, a percentage of people seem incapable of realising that throwing litter will actually harm the beauty of the place long term. There is clearly a mental block in society and indeed in parenting and education that allows this attitude to persist.
Fines for littering are small compared to the degree of the problem. For 2021/22, 23,700 (26%) of fixed penalty notices were issued specifically for small scale fly-tipping, 42,500 (47%) in relation to littering, 5,900 (6%) in relation to household duty of care and 19,000 (21%) in relation to other waste offences.
Local councils throughout the country are budget constrained yet littering continues apace and ironically could lead to revenue creation if effective law enforcement of litter fines were implemented.
Thanet council did have litter enforcement officers employed but these did not work out. However, there are conscientious people out there who I am sure would be prepared to take on such a job. This would require two litter enforcement officers working together for security reasons. This has potential also for accruing revenue for councils, parish, district, county and urban councils.
TDC has a great officer liaising with schools to highlight the issues relating to litter. The Ramsgate Litter Forum ,which brings together TDC, Ramsgate Town Council and community groups and also, the Botany Bay community Interest company that organises litter picks and many other volunteer groups in Thanet are trying tirelessly to tackle litter.. Whilst these are great initiatives and need supporting and applauding the nub of the problem still remains.
It should not be down to volunteers again and again to help reduce the litter that just continues apace when councils cannot cope.
At the end of the day, society has to act on the packaging issue that has got out of control. Large corporations like Nestles, Cadbury, Unilever, crisp and other confectionary producers etc continue to produce products with largely unbiodegradable/compostable packaging creating a time bomb for future generations, blighting the environment and adding to the mix of issues that are causing the demise of the diversity of this planet week on week, month on month, year on year.
Why hasn’t the UK government acted like France and banned plastic packaging on 30 fruits and vegetables? Spain, Portugal and Luxemburg will do the same this year. https://www.everydayplastic.org/chooseloose
Plastic Free Communities are feasible and a just ambition https://plasticfree.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/PFC-Impact-Report-2022.pdf Future generations will thank us if we ban single use plastics and likely denigrate us if we do not.
Ridding the Oceans of plastic – https://theoceancleanup.com/
