WASTE MANAGEMENT
A time of waste E
very day thousands and thousands of people drop litter. A crisp
packet here, a cigarette end there. None of which will cause anybody any harm - or so they think.
But last year £858,000,000 was spent on street cleansing by local authorities - money which could potentially be spent on other things.
Although there has been a slight improvement in terms of the volume of litter being dropped, the overall volume of litter being dropped has stayed the same for many years.
Phil Barton, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy, estimates that around 2 million pieces of litter are dropped every day.
“Although things are getting a little better, the amount of litter being dropped by the public has stayed about the same for the past decade. However we have attributed this slight improvement to the way in which local authorities go about their cleansing.
“To improve the situation further, there needs to be substantial changes in behaviour from the public at large, both when they are walking down the street, but also when they are disposing of litter to ensure that it won’t just blow out of the skip or bin they are using and back onto the street. This needs to be accompanied by a large- scale education or awareness programme to take place.
“For example, since the smoking ban the amount of smoking
Nov/Dec 10
Every year hundreds of millions of pounds are spent by local authorities cleansing our streets. Philip Barton tells Public Sector Executive what can be done to reduce this huge expenditure
The issue of enforcement in littering has a tendency to attract a lot of negative coverage from the media, which means that it needs to be approached in the right way.
“In a way, councils can’t win in this regard because there can be a number of stories about how messy a certain place is but when that council tries to do something about the problem, they are painted as being over zealous.
“Keep Britain Tidy feel that enforcement is a very important part of the package and needs to be proportional, because a lot of stories which reach the newspapers - when subjected to more intense scrutiny, tend to only put across one side of the story.
related litter has doubled and this is part down to the ban itself, but also to a large extent because many smokers don’t see dropping a cigarette butt as littering. It is things such as this which means that we need
Philip Barton
a combination of education and awareness, coupled with appropriate, strong but proportional enforcement.
“We also need to see a much greater part being played by all of the major players within the industries which are producing packaging, including retailers and manufacturers, as well as land management agencies such as the Highways Agency, Network Rail, along with all of the local authorities, working much better together. No one of us can tackle this problem on our own - it needs a co-ordinated effort.”
“We support local authorities having well trained enforcement officers who have the frame of mind to carry out their duty effectively. Sometimes a firm word with someone can be more effective than an on the spot fine.
“However this is a complex issue, which can’t be solved with any one measure. I feel that fines need to be a part of a much wider policy. For example, there is a lot of evidence that the ‘broken window theory’ applies in the case of litter and that if a place is well managed and the bins are emptied, then people are much less likely to litter.
“But, if on the other hand the bins are overflowing we know that lots of people who wouldn’t otherwise litter would add to it.”
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