Litter, trash,garbage, rubbish, refuse, junk: Revisited

The city of Bangkok is amazing - vibrant, colorful, noisy, chaotic, and wonderful in many ways. All the street food vendors, the Buddhist shrines everywhere, the flood water when the monsoon rains fall, the traffic, the taxis which always seem to take you to the wrong place, the tuk-tuks, and the street food! There is fast food everywhere, cooked at the pavement, eaten at rickety tables sitting on sometimes tiny chairs. People seem to be living on top of one another. The population density per Wikipedia is said to be 5300 per km2, pretty much the same as London. (OK I know that we can debate which area of a city is used for these calculations, but for the sake of argument let's take these figures to be pretty roughly comparable.) Why then is Bangkok so clean? And London so dirty?
I am talking mainly about litter. Of course in Bangkok the street food avoids the plastic wrapping that is so much a part of fast food London and its suburbs. But surely there is something more to this? Is it the pride that people take in their home town? Of course you see plenty of rubbish in the streets of Bangkok, but it is largely the piles awaiting collection by the public services or whoever takes this away for them.

Albany in Western Australia is so clean. Litter really is a minor problem. And the whole place is clean. The pavements are clean. The bus stops are clean. The parks are clean. And people get annoyed with other people who leave cigarette butts at beauty spots -they leave notices - and butt-bins - and clean up after them!

a besmirched mosaic in the Oxted subway - disgusting!

Oxted in Surrey UK is filthy. And it has a real litter problem as well. Population? Albany has 281 per km2, not that far different from Oxted with c. 330 per km2. So how can Albany be so clean, Oxted so dirty? Is it simply that Albany cares?

Come on UK. Let's start having a little more pride in how we look.

And this is chewing gum all over the pavements in Oxted.  Disgusting? Yes!!

How much money are YOU throwing away?

It costs £6 million to deal with the food we throw away every year - and that's just in Surrey UK! That's one county among many. And that's the cost of collecting and recycling the stuff, and it's just a third of the total food we waste.
And that money could fund 630 primary school places, buy a million library books or fix 108,000 potholes. 
Those are the stats in the latest magazine we receive regularly called Surrey Matters, from Surrey County Council.
That got me thinking again about the cost of litter. It costs council tax payers in England £885 million to clear up our litter and by 2015 this is projected to nudge £1 billion!! That's lots of kids not being taught, books not being bought and potholes not being mended!!
And in America it's no better. Just have a look at http://www.ecori.org/pollution-contamination/2012/2/2/societal-cost-of-litter-is-largely-hidden.html for lots more info about the cost of litter on the other side of the pond.
Down the side of this blog you'll find an infographic from cleanupbritain.org that paints a shocking picture.
You can sign the pledge there to do your bit to clean up your country, wherever you may live. Think of the money that at the end of the day must come out of our own pockets if we don't take our litter home with us and if we chuck so much food away!

Trash, garbage, litter, rubbish, refuse, junk

Trash, garbage, litter, rubbish, refuse, junk, waste; whatever we want to call it, thrown down in the wrong place it is unsightly, costs us billions each year to clear up, and is a blight on our roads, verges, highways, countryside, parks, wherever in fact we live and work and have our being.

Consider this, taken, it is true, from an article in The Scotsman by Derek Robertson, chief executive of Keep Scotland Beautiful, although the issue is relevant everywhere in the world, in the Americas, Europe, and in just about every society where humans live:

“Litter is actually a more serious and ­further-reaching problem than many people might think. There is a visual problem, of course. However, littering also has social consequences and causes negative outcomes in relation to our health, our society and our public spending.

The Carnegie UK Trust recently reported that incidences of illness, depression and medical intervention were higher in areas that were filthy and litter-strewn. Furthermore, the report found fear of crime is higher where there are high ­occurrences of litter and other environmental incivilities such as dog-fouling, fly-tipping and graffiti.”

And if you still don’t think this affects you, you should consider that huge sums of money are spent by our authorities every year cleaning up our litter.

This, the article points out, is your litter, from your streets, and it is your money; money that could be better spent, perhaps on healthcare or education or parks or playgrounds or other valuable amenities. 

Please read the full article, wherever you live, and whether or not you can see for yourself the problem around you. I hope this will open your eyes. Please let me know whether you see this as a problem where you live. Is anything being done about it? Do you care? I care very deeply indeed, and like Derek Robertson, I think that we need to start cleaning up our world, urgently. 

To this end I am happy to wear my Zilch  litter patrol high viz vest as I walk around my area and beyond, doing my own bit to clean up our country. 

Will you do the same? Please? And I welcome all ideas as to how we educate people to take their trash home with them and put it in their own trash bins.

This is the harvest from one hour's litter pick by me recently on a short stretch of a local main road!!

Stop the Drop - Save our countryside from trash

Trash, garbage, litter, whatever you call it, £2.1 million per day is spent in England alone on clearing it up. 1.3 million items are thrown down each weekend!! As I drive around our beautiful countryside I am dismayed by the litter along the verges. I have followed lorry drivers and watched as they toss empty drink cans or sandwich wrappers out of the cab window. I have seen car drivers empty out their car ashtrays onto the tarmac of the supermarket car park. I have seen swans hurt through swallowing fish hooks and nylon line, birds that have died in a tangle of string or netting carelessly left lying around outside. I have seen laybys festooned with the remnants of picnics because the family could not be bothered to take their litter home.
The workers who walk along the sides of the roads with their litter picker tools and the sacks to receive the garbage are clearly putting themselves in danger - and it is all our fault! Road signs alerting us to the dangers they face are increasing in number. In France the signs give them names - hoping perhaps that personalising the sign a little in this way will get through to us, help us to heed it.

But why don't we just "stop the drop?"
The Campaign to Protect Rural England has started a campaign, headed up by Bill Bryson, who is a staunch supporter of everything British. Will you support it?

So please dispose of your litter thoughtfully and carefully, so that England may remain green and pleasant for those who come along after us.